At the End of the World
by Katsura
Summary: Two backwater kids find the bestkept secrets of the world. Chapters 16 and 17 are rated NC17. Finished uploading 83102
1. At the End of the World (Prologue)

No one could remember exactly how long it had been since the last battle between the Angels and the EVA units. But the world had been thrown into turmoil afterwards, and it had not yet recovered. 

Land was a high commodity, since so much had been ruined when the last attack had come. It was coveted jealously by those who held it, and was sold at high rates to those who wanted it. Politics played a high role in the world structure...where politics could be played. Countries were divided by anarchy in poor areas where the land was ruined beyond hope to high dictatorship in areas where the land was richer. 

_ Beneath the City of Night, a secret waited patiently for discovery._

Tokyo-3 had been hit the worst by the final attack, and it now lay in ruins beneath an eternal cloud that boiled blackly. It poured flash floods from its dark depths, lightning erupted constantly from one part or another. No one dared to go near it, much less in it, for very long, for it was worth your life to stay too long. 

_ Signs still hang, warning of the danger._

One man, Adam Carson, a travelling man who roamed the world, looking for salvages that would be worth a lot of money, dared to enter the ruins of Tokyo-3. He was inside for months, and when he emerged, he barely escaped for his life. But he had what he had been looking for...evidence of NERV and the infamous EVA units. 

_ The Night is watching._

Adam Carson has kept the secret of Tokyo-3 for twenty years. Now he has the money he needs to carry out his plan... 

_ The secret uncovered._

He plans the excavate NERV headquarters and resurrect the Evangelion units. 

_ The secret awake._

  
_Author: Please realize as I wrote this that I was quite full of myself and a lot of things will not be "canon". Please feel free to email me with questions._


	2. At the End of the World (1)

For as long as I can remember, I have lived in darkness. 

It wasn't always physical darkness. Always, I could see the sun, play outside, do things other kids could do... but I didn't have a home, no permanent place to stay, no sure source of food, and I couldn't ever remember having parents. I lived in the slums of the only prosperous city in Japan, and I lived on my own. 

I met Tashi when I was around six years old. I was lost, tired and very very sick. I somehow wandered into his yard while he was playing outside and fell down at his feet. He ran to get his mother, and they took me in until I got better. Afterwards, I had to go back to the streets. 

Tashi managed to sneak away every now and then, more often as we both got older. He brought me food and protected me from the various bullies that terrorized the children of the city. He took care of me whenever I was sick or was injured. He always snuck me into his house when it was stormy outside and let me stay in the basement for as long as he could get away with. His parents didn't approve of his association with me, though I could never figure out why. 

He was always nice to me. When he let me stay in his basement, he always had a bed for me, even though it was lumpy and uncomfortable, had no pillows and only a small, thin blanket that didn't do much good. He came and stayed with me in the bed, letting me use him as a pillow and it was warmer that way too. He had treats for me always, usually a cookie or something similar. I always looked forward to seeing him. 

Then one day, when I was perhaps eight or nine years old, Tashi was visiting me in the slums and was tending to my badly scraped knee when some men came through and rounded up all the children they could find, including me and Tashi. He couldn't get away, and I could tell that he was worried about getting home. But he took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze and kept us together as the men pressed more and more children in around us. Frightened though I was, Tashi was there by my side, and I had absolute trust in his ability to make things better for me. 

The men seperated us after a time, and I was both sad and scared to be seperated from my only friend, but I knew he wouldn't approve of me if I was to break down and show weakness to these men, so I held up a brave front, though inside I was shaking like a leaf on a tree in a strong wind. 

It was weeks before I saw him again. I had been taken to several different buildings and had been poked and prodded by piles of men and women in white coats with cold instruments and big needles. I had been tagged with a bracelet around my wrist which displayed my name, approximate age, blood type and a few other things, none of which I could read. I was illiterate, and had been for a long time. 

When I was reunited with Tashi, it was at the City of Night, Tokyo-3 and I thought it was hell. 

There was no sun, only the big black cloud that rumbled threateningly overhead. For some reason, that scared me more than anything I had ever been through could. 

We were taken to some underground bunkers that were dark and cold and wet. I could hear the sound of small feet skittering, and several brushed against my bare feet and legs. I was shivering and cold, and I clung to Tashi in fear. 

That night, as we lay in our bunks, the men came again, and they told us what we were doing here, and the next day, we began the hard task of excavating the city. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	3. At the End of the World (2)

I was almost fourteen when we hit the jackpot. 

Tashi and I had been working together since we had come here, five years earlier. We were a good team. We helped move out more stuff than any other team, and we also uncovered more artifacts than anyone else. 

After we had been brought to Tokyo-3, the leaders had chained us at the wrist in pairs. I was fortunate enough to get chained to Tashi; there was no one in the entire group I could have stood being shackled to for very long, save him. We never talked much, but we never had to. I always knew when he needed my help, and he knew my need in return. 

We were the ones to discover the lost NERV headquarters. The truth was, we had known where it was for months, but had never bothered to tell the leaders. We both felt, in those rare moments where we did talk, that the people who were holding us here had no right to the secrets buried beneath the ruins of the city. So we just never mentioned the huge building we had found. Whenever we could, we would go back to the site and uncover a little more. 

I had thought that the discovery of HQ was a big deal, but it was the find of several months later that shadowed it all in comparison. 

We were digging around a large, long shaft when, at the bottom, I could see a large, covered object at the bottom. My light wasn't powerful enough, so I asked Tashi if we could perhaps get a little closer. He shrugged and replied with, "Why not?" So we took our rope, attached one end to a big heavy bar right next to the shaft, and then unlocked our chains, as we had learned long ago. 

It was kind of scary. Tashi looked at me soberly for a moment, then said, "You go first." I nodded in reply, hooking my light over my shoulder. Then I got myself into the shaft with a good hold on the rope and slid down easily. I jumped off and landed uneasily. 

The object was so uneven. I walked across the top unsteadily, shining my light this way and that, trying to see the best way to lift the covering. Experimentally, I lifted a fold of it that seemed to be stretched between two seperate points on it. "It's cloth," I said, startled, and let it fall back into place. 

"Can you pull it off?" Tashi asked, sliding down to my level. 

"I can try," I replied doubtfully. I couldn't see to the bottom of the object, or what it was standing on, if anything, so I guessed that the covering was awfully big. Still, I handed Tashi the light, which he attached to his vest and we began to muscle the covering off. 

It took awhile and afterwards, I threw it off the other side. It slide off with a hiss that seemed far too loud in the darkness, and I sat for a moment to rest. I was tired. There had been so much to pull up the one side and drop off the other... 

"Mei...look," Tashi said quietly, pointing the light at a spot near where I was sitting. 

I looked...and nearly fell off the object. 

Tashi had taught me how to read a couple years ago. I still wasn't very good, but if I went slowly, I could read nearly anything. This object...it was covered in dust and who-knew-what-else, but the colours were still visible, and so was the lettering. Still, I had to wipe off a good portion before I could make out the words clearly. 

The leaders had told us what we were to be looking for. And I was sitting on it. 

There, now wiped clear and visible even with the comparitively dim flashlight, was yellow and black striped warning markings on a purple body, along with these words: 

_Warning: EVA Entry Plug Access. Do Not Use Unless in Case of Emergency._

Beside it was big yellow lettering: 

_EVA UNIT-01_

I didn't know what to think. Here I was, sitting on a lost EVA unit, something the leaders had been searching for since we had gotten here, and probably since before then too. "What are we going to do?" I asked. 

Tashi shrugged, scattering the light for a moment. "Two things," he said after a moment, centering the light on the lettering again. "We either tell the leaders, or we keep this to ourselves." 

I snorted, feeling myself return a little bit. "Do you...do you think we could...you know...activate it?" I asked, looking up at Tashi. 

He looked thoughtful for a long moment. "We could...if we knew how." 

I sighed and looked down again at the purple body beneath me. "I wonder how you open it up...?" I asked myself. I got to my knees on the back and ran my fingers lightly over the yellow and black striped panel. I didn't think I had hit anything, but it made a creaking sound and slid open a crack. "Whoa, what'd I touch?" I said, removing my hands hurriedly. 

Tashi knelt beside me. He looked thoughtfully at the panel for a moment. "There," he said at last, pointing at a small button, nearly hidden on the side of the panel. "Press that again." 

I pressed the button and the panel slid open a bit more. Inside, we could see two more buttons. So I pressed the button one more time, and as the panel slipped open a bit more, Tashi stuck his fingers in between the panel's edges and forced it open all the way. Then he picked up the light again and shone it inside. I leaned over and bumped my head with Tashi's as he also leaned in for a closer look. I pulled back automatically and let him inspect it. 

"Hmmm," he said thoughtfully. "I think we push this one here..." He pressed the topmost button, but nothing happened. He pushed it again after a few moments, and then frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know -- " He stopped as the head behind us groaned and jerkily slid forward. There was a larger panel directly underneath us, and it moved upward, throwing us off-balance. Tashi immeadiately laid himself flat against the panel and caught hold of me as I started to slip off, catching hold of my waist and pulling me in close beside him. "Lay flat," he ordered roughly in my ear. I did as he said, flattening myself out next to him and hanging on tight. 

The panel stopped moving, and we lay still for a few more minutes to make sure that it wasn't going to move anymore. Then Tashi got up and carefully crawled on all fours to the edge of the panel and looked down over it. 

"Come see this, Mei," he said, motioning with one hand for me to come closer. I crawled closer and peered over the edge. 

"Wow!" I exclaimed. "It's hollow!" 

"There must be something else that goes in there...," Tashi mused, lying flat again. His eyes were distant. 

"Tashi, think! What if there are more of these? Wouldn't that be neat!" I was really too excited to pay attention to him. Before I could really stop to think about it or before he could stop me, I swung myself over the edge of the panel and down into the hole. 

"Mei!" I heard Tashi call my name, but I was too far engrossed in what I was seeing to answer him. "Mei! Are you alright? Come out of there!" 

I walked a little bit into the hole. It was so dark; I couldn't see a thing. "Tashi?" I called. 

"What?" came his tired voice. 

"Can you pass me the light? I can't see anything in here." 

Silence for a moment, then the light came swinging over the edge of the panel. I caught it deftly, and pulled it down into my hand. I shone it around the inside of the tunnel, taking paticular note of the smoothness of the walls. Then, when I was about a third of the way down, I saw a big yellow sign painted on the floor, surrounded by yellow stripes. 

"Entry...Plug...Only," I read out loud as I swung the light from one side to the other. "Do...Not...Pass...This...Point. Hmm." Never one to listen to signs and warnings, I kept going...and heard something go _click_. 

I stopped dead. Inside, a red light started flashing. 

"Mei!" Tashi was shouting. "Mei! Get out of there! MEI!" 

That's when I realized that the panel was closing. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	4. At the End of the World (3)

Or rather, the panel was trying to close. 

I turned around and saw that the panel was closing about halfway; stopping, then opening again. It tried to close, but it only repeated the same process. Confused, I stepped back towards the entrance of the tunnel. The red light stopped flashing, and the panel slid open again. I shone the light around the tunnel walls, seeing for the first time the small square on the floor, and I guessed I had stepped on it, making it sink and causing some sort of reaction, but something was missing, so it stopped. "Huh," I said to myself. Then I turned around and walked back out of the tunnel. 

I handed the light back to Tashi and then swung myself back up onto the panel with his help. When I was back up there, he surprised me by pulling me into a rough hug. 

"Don't ever do that again," he whispered in my ear. "You scared me half to death." 

"I'm fine," I assured him, more confused than ever. Tashi had stopped hugging me three years ago... 

He let me go a few moments later, pulling back to look at me with an unreadable expression on his face. "Good," he said finally. "C'mon, let's see if we can get this thing closed again." He turned and crawled from the edge of the panel. 

I followed, still wondering what had come over him. 

We managed to get the panel closed by pressing the other button in the smaller panel, but the cloth that had been covering the Unit was gone, so we couldn't pull that over again. Tashi went up first, and then sent the rope flying back down to me. I patted Unit-01 lovingly before catching hold of the rope and Tashi lifted me up to the top of the shaft. 

* * *

It was a couple months after I turned fourteen that we got Unit-01 working. 

The leaders allowed us more freedom now. Tashi had appealed to them quietly, saying that we couldn't possilbly couldn't find NERV HQ without going off for a few days at a time. He also insisted that we couldn't possibly take a radio with us; it would just attract any errant power down here, and we could be electrocuted. He said it with just the right amount of awe and fear in his voice and posture that they believed we would come back, no matter what. Like we couldn't think for ourselves or escape or make it on our own. 

So we always went back to the Unit, just to see if we could make it work again. 

By then, we could jury rig anything that needed a power supply and was electronical. Tashi found a generator which he got working again, and had attached some cables to some lights we had found and hung around Unit-01. Now we could see what we were doing. 

We had poked around a bit more, finding what was left of what the door had once said "Central Control." Inside was various bits and pieces of what had been the ceiling lying all over the place, and what looked like chairs were scattered across the floor. Computer consoles were dark and some screens were broken. We tried to get one working again, and it turned out that I had the best luck at this. 

I had next to no knowledge of electronics and the operating of computers, yet it took me less than a month to get one of them working and accessing files. That was how we learned about the EVA's. 

There was more than just Unit-01, which had been our assumption until then. There was Units-00 to 13. 00 to 04 needed pilots, thought sensors, entry plugs and external power sources, but 05 through 13 were completely independant. We learned what exactly the entry plugs were (they were long cylinders which held the pilots and the vital portions that made the Unit run) and what they did, plus the uses of the thought sensors, placed on the head of the pilot. We also discovered that not all the Units had been destroyed, but had been left in NERV HQ. 

We searched for the other Units, but we didn't search very hard. We had found Unit-01's entry plug and were primarily concerned with getting it operational again. 

Like everything else we had found, the entry plug needed cleaning, badly. We had to take an entire week and a half just to get the door clear, and another half a week to clean the manual door release out. Then we opened the door and peered inside. 

The air was stale of course, but we ignored it and waited until it had cleared out. Then we could see the pilot's seat and hand controls...and a suit and thought sensors lying on the seat. It was a major find. 

I crawled into the plug, excited, and pulled the suit and sensors off the seat. I backed out of the plug and handed the sensors to Tashi, holding up the suit. 

"Isn't this great?" I asked enthusiastically. "We found the essential parts of the Unit!" 

"Not really," Tashi said calmly, examining the sensors. "These are just supposed to help. But that's not the point," he added. "We did make a major find." 

The day afterwards, we decided to try the plug out. Tashi went first, placing the sensors on his head and climbimg inside. I shut the door behind him, and waited quietly. He was inside a long time. Just when the silence got unbearable and I was about to open the door, it swung open on its own and Tashi stumbled out, coughing. 

"It doesn't -- " He stopped to cough. "It has a personality," he continued as I got in next to him and helped him out. "I don't know how, but it has a distinct personality, and it doesn't like me." He looked up at me, his eyes clouded slightly. Then he slowly reached up and pulled the sensors off of his head. "Here, you try it. It might like you." 

Startled, I took the sensors from him and affixed them to my head like I had seen him do. Then I got up and climbed into the entry plug, closing the door behind me. I faced the cramped inside and sat down in the pilot's seat, placing my hands lightly on the controls. 

It was a unique experience. I sat there for an indeterminate amount of time, looking about me at the dark interior in awe. Then, when I let myself relax and get used to the surroundings -- the smell and feel of the place -- I felt what Tashi had: a distinct personality. 

It wasn't the plug; I knew that without really realizing it. It was the Unit itself, reaching out to the plug and into the sensors. I could feel it lightly touching the edges of my mind, and that scared me. It seemed to know that and pulled out. For the next few minutes, I could feel it's conscience running over and through me, exploring whatever it was that made me. 

Then came the distinct and very clear thought: _I like you._

It was shocking; it took me a moment to recover from that, and when I had, I realized that the conscience was gone. 

Stunned, I got out of the plug. 

Tashi was waiting for me; he took hold of me as soon as I stepped out of the plug. "How was it?" he asked tensely. 

I couldn't reply for a moment. "It likes me," I said softly. "I don't know how, or why, but it told me that it liked me." 

Tashi seemed surprised for a moment. "Truly?" he asked. 

I looked up at him, knowing that he could read what I was feeling in my eyes. "Truly," I whispered, dropping my gaze. 

He was silent a moment longer, and then he cheered loudly. 

I stared up at him, surprised beyond belief. 

"This is great!" he cried, lifting me up in the air and swinging me around. He set me down and hugged me tightly. "We have a hope now," he whispered in my ear. "We just might, beyond all expectations, actually make this work!" 

I smiled, and rested my head against his shoulder. He continued to hold me for some time, until he carefully and gently pushed me away, his hands still resting on my shoulders. 

"C'mon," he said warmly, smiling at me, "let's keep working." 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	5. At the End of the World (4)

It was a month later that we really got Unit-01 working. 

I had been practicing getting into the entry plug and connecting with the conscience in the Unit for the entire time. By now, I was an absolute whiz at putting on the sensors and hopping in, to the point where I was nearly positive that I could do it in my sleep and be ready to go before I was even half-awake. 

Tashi had done all the tests on the plug while I was inside. He showed me what he was doing -- using a the computer in Central Control, he monitored what exactly was happening to me. He said something about my synchronization rate going up by exponents (only a couple, he said, but still...), but it all made very little sense to me. All I really knew was that the Unit and I had an understanding with each other...I would take care of it and it would take care of me. Simple. 

The day of our big test came. We had set a date for when we would attempt it, and for a lot of the time when I was working on the Unit -- for whatever reason -- he had been trying to get the main power generator up again. We had been able to charge the Unit's internal power source for up to one minute, but it wasn't enough for the test we had to run. 

We had to get Unit-01 clear of it's cage, out of the prison it had known for the past gods knew how many years. 

The day started out great. Tashi and I took our time waking up, slowly extracting ourselves from our "nest" of blanketing (it got awfully cold down there, and we had been sharing a bed and blankets since we had come here). Tashi made breakfast while I washed my hair and body. 

I had never practiced in the pilot's suit. I just couldn't bing myself to do it; I didn't want to get into the lovely thing when I was as dirty as I was. There was never really any opportunity for baths down here. I was lucky this time; Tashi had made sure there was enough water for me to have a bath. 

I ate breakfast slowly, waiting for my hair to dry. Tashi was conversational, asking me mundane questions that had nothing to do with what we were attempting today. It was one of the best conversations I'd ever had. 

He left after a time, saying that he had to make sure the power connections were working right. I knew that that was a cover -- he wanted to give me a little time to prepare myself. 

I was grateful for it. I sat there a bit longer, thinking quietly to myself. I wasn't really scared of what I had to do, but I did need to think a bit. When I was done, I stood up and went behind the curtain we had hung to seperate our sleeping space from the rest of the place to change into the suit. 

I had tried it on once, to see how it worked. I was glad to discover in the computer's files how it operated. It was designed to be worn over nude skin, and it went on loosely. There was a button on the left wrist that, when pressed, sucked all the excess air out of the suit and left it very form-fitting. This was good; I didn't have to worry about taking anything but my shirt and pants off, or about getting it to fit right without having to sew it up again. I slipped into it now easily, closing it over my body and pausing for just a second before pressing the button on the wrist. With a hiss, the material suctioned itself to my body, giving me a feeling of properness, for it hadn't felt right, sagging here and there in uncomfortable places before. 

I looked down at myself as I attached the sensors to my head, pinning my now-dry hair back with them. The suit had been designed for a boy; that was obvious. I didn't have much in the way of a woman's body though, so I didn't really distort the lines of the suit. It did cleave nicely to the bits I did have, softening and accenting them subtlely. I smiled to myself. It really felt good to be in this suit...almost as if I was born to wear it. 

I stepped out from behind the curtain, and had the pleasure of seeing Tashi's face go stunned. He had made it back early from the power generators, I guessed in time to see me into the plug safely. When I stepped out, he absolutely froze, a look of awe coming over his face. His eyes ran up and down my body, and for the first time in my life, I felt self-concious. I placed my hands behind my back, bowed my head a little and cocked one leg. "Does it look okay?" I asked. "I look silly, don't I?" 

"No," he assured me quickly. "No, it looks...well, great." A smile crept over his features as his eyes met mine. I flushed at the lookof approval in them. "You ready?" he continued. 

"As ready as I'll ever be," I replied, taking a step towards the passage we used to get to the EVA. 

He stepped up beside me and offered me his arm. Confused and more than a little pleased, I took it, my gloved hand resting lightly on his forearm. 

At the entry plug, he opened the door for me and as I stepped inside, he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "Good luck," he said softly, a strange look on his face. 

I regarded him for a moment. "Thanks," I said, and climbed into the plug. Tashi shut the door behind me. 

I was calm almost immeadiately, although a part of me was very geared up and excited. I felt the Unit's conscience link softly to mine, assuring me that everything was going to be okay. I smiled at it, knowing it would feel the gesture more than see it. 

I was aware of the plug being lifted into the air. We had managed to get it almost level with the entrance for it on the Unit, but it still had to be lifted a bit to get it in. Tashi had been practicing that as well, and he was really good at lining it up and getting it in. 

The next thing I was aware of was the plug somewhere below my feet being pushed slightly into the tunnel beneath the panel. That was all it needed. The Unit took over, twisting the plug around until it was securely into place, the panel closing protectively over it. 

A light came on inside the plug, a red light that was fairly dim, but bright enough to see by. I closed my eyes, calming myself and mentally running through all the preperations the Unit needed to be ready to take off. I could feel the Unit responding to the silent commands. 

A new voice cut into the silence of the pod. "Mei?" It was Tashi; who else would it have been, down here on our own? 

"Yes?" I asked softly, still not opening my eyes. 

"I have to fill the plug with LCL. It's a chemical that will help you breath in there." 

"All right," I replied. I felt so calm... 

I barely noticed the liquid rising up around my feet and over my legs. When it rose up to where I could feel it on my bare skin, it was too late and I had inhaled it. I choked at first, my eyes flying open, but eventually I realized that it wasn't killing me, and that I was actually breathing marginally better. 

"Can you still reply?" Tashi asked, sounding anxious. 

"Of course," I said, not even noticing the bubbles that rose out of my mouth. 

"Oh, thank goodness...Okay, Mei," he continued, all business now, "I have the generators rigged and ready. They're all powered up and waiting." 

"Roger." I moved one control a little to the left and another closer towards me. A display showed that power systems were online, charged and ready to go. 

"I'm now checking the clearest route to the surface....done. Transferring data now." 

Another disply showed a series of tunnels, all with green lights, going up to the surface. 

"Roger," I said. "Systems show that the route is clear." 

"Prepare for take off." 

I braced myself. The Unit assured me that everything would be fine. 

"NOW!" 

The Unit lurched and I had the impression of being shot up against gravity at incredible speeds. It seemed to go on forever, until I thought that my brain would join my feet at the bottom of the plug. And then suddenly, it stopped. My stomach leaped into my throat. 

"Visuals!" I said aloud as well as thought. A screen in front of me displayed what was on the outside. 

At first, I thought the visuals were busted, the screen was completely black. Then, almost right overhead, lightning flashed brightly. I realized that the the head was tilted up. With a great effort, I managed to get the Unit to lower it's head. 

It's much harder in here, actually piloting it, rather than just sitting in the plug, I thought. 

_It's easy,_ came the thought from the Unit. _Just relax._

I was starled; I always was when it spoke to me like that, which wasn't often. But I tried to do as it asked and sat back in my seat, closing my eyes and forcing myself to relax. When I felt calm enough, I pictured the Unit taking a step forward and felt it lurch. My eyes flew open. I was still calm enough to move the head around, barely noticing that it was much easier now, and Ilooked down. There, visible in a flash of lightning, was one of the Unit's feet, placed in front of the other as though it had paused in mid-stride. 

"Whoa," I said. 

The internal speakers crackled. "--ei?" came Tashi's voice. "Mei, can you hear me?" 

I flipped a sitch. "I can hear you," I replied. "Can you hear me?" 

"It's a little broken up," he said, the speakers cutting out as lightning flashed. " -- problems." 

"What? We have a problems?" I paused as lightning flashed again, hitting the ground a few hundred feet off to the left. "What kind of problems?" I continued once the speakers cleared. 

"We're generating lots of power, and I think it's enough for the leaders to register it on their sensors back at their HQ. I'm also registering movement about an hour from where we found Unit-01, but they could be a lot closer or farther because there's so much interference from the generators." 

"Drat," I said, thinking hard. "How long do we have before they get suspicious?" 

"Maybe...5, 10 minutes. Twenty at the absolute most. We really can't let them find out about this yet." 

"Roger that," I said, and turned the speakers down. "All right then, Unit-01, let's see what you can do." I relaxed myself again and pictured the Unit walking forward. It responded beautifully, walking down the street and over rubble easily. I picked up the pace until we were running and then turned a corner. Thrilled by how well the Unit was doing, I turned it into a cartwheel. 

"Yahoo!" I yelled. 

"Mei!" Tashi's frantic voice cut in on my excitement. "Abort the test! "Repeat, abort the test!" 

The Unit faltered on the last of the cartwheel as I lost concentration and we crashed to the ground, sliding several hundred feet from the momentum and stopping only when we plowed into a fallen building. 

"What?' I demanded. "Tashi, what's going on?" 

"Those teams are in the farthest shaft of HQ here! I see them on various levels, so there must be another Unit there! We can't let them have it! I need you here to stop them!" 

"On my way!" I got EVA-01 extracted from the wreck of the building and ran back the way I had come. When I got to the corner, I slid into the intersection, purposely crashing into another building and using it as a springboard to run back down the first street, barely noticing the building crashing to the ground. 

I didn't know I had been shot to street level in an open elevator-like thing, but I didn't stop to wonder about it as I ran up and turned at the last moment so that my momentum carried me right into it, facing the way I came. "Clear!" I shouted. The elevator shot downwards immeadiately, and about a minute later, I was back underground in NERV HQ. 

"Where to?" I asked Tashi. 

"To your left. Be careful, though. There might be other Units." 

"I will," I whispered and spun around in the tiny cage. My own sensors were starting to display movement to my left, and it also showed what was in between me and them. It registered seven other presences, barely visible on the heat sensors; I didn't have or take the time to let Tashi know or wonder about it. But now I did know they were there, and spared them from the damage I could have casued. 

I crashed throught the last wall and skidded to a stop before hitting the opposite wall. I froze, waiting for them to register my presence while I already knew about theirs. I was amazed at the amount of people; seven or eight entire divisions -- twenty pairs each -- and most of the people higher up who kept them in line. They had high powered lights which the turned on my about four seconds after I stopped. I whipped my head around to face them, glaring at them through their lights. 

Through the external sound recievers, I heard every last one of them gasp. Several pairs screamed and a couple even turned tail and ran. 

I knew I made an impressive sight. Sure, I was dusty from crashing into two buildings topside and ten walls or so down here, but I was still much, much bigger than them and I moved, unlike the still Unit underneath it's protective sheet on the left. Slowly, I came out of the posture I had held -- one foot in front of the other, arms held out and bent at the elbows, body bent over slightly as though I was a still frame in time and was about to go running through the other wall, my face glaring balefully at them and my jaw, full of lots of sharp teeth as big as a man, partly opened -- and turned to them, taking one slow step towards them. Several more pairs screamed and ran; a couple more fainted dead away. Even one of the higher-ups fainted. 

I flipped the external speakers. "Leave," I said coldly. "You have no business here." 

One of the leaders stepped forward. I recognized him as the head of the project, though I knew that even he was just a pawn in a much bigger game. I had always been afraid of him, but now he was the one who looked afraid. His face was absolutely pale and his body temperature was way up. He cleared his throat. 

"Um, we come in peace," he started, but stopped when I stepped towards him and reached out a hand to take him in it. He nearly fainted when I took hold of him carefully and brought him to eye level. 

"No you don't," I said. He fainted. 

I turned to the rest of the people. "Anyone else want to tell me lies?" I set him down again. 

No one moved. 

"Good. Now why are you here?" 

No one answered for a moment. Then one of the higher-ups cleared his throat and timidly said, "We're supposed to find the lost Evangelion Units of NERV." 

"You're too late. Obviously, I am found." 

"There must be more, like this one here -- " 

"There are no more!" I cut in. "This one is the last, but it is dead. No one can resurrect it. Now I suggest that you all leave." 

There was a long pause. I noticed an almost imperceptible movement out of the corner of my eye and turned towards it almost too late. Someone was setting up a gun -- a big gun. 

And pulled the trigger. The barrel was aimed straight at my head. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	6. At the End of the World (5)

Before I fully knew what was going on, I dropped into a crouch, the missle going right past me and barrelling through the wall. Snarling with anger, I jumped up and knocked them down, not caring at that moment if they died or not. When I turned to face the group again, the higher ups all had handguns trained on me. 

"Freeze!" the first one said, having recovered from his faint. "Now, you're going to give us some answers." 

"The hell I am!" I took a step towards them, but stopped when they opened fire. I raised both arms in front of my face, protecting it with my forearms. But I kept walking towards them, and when they paused to reload, I brought one arm and slammed it down in front of them, effectively blocking their aim. 

"You are going to give me some answers," I snarled. "Why do you want the EVA Units?" 

"We're working for Adam Carson," the first man said, somewhat disgustedly. "He wants the Units so he can get the UN to agree to his demands. I swear, that's all I know." He looked up, trying to see around my arm. 

I didn't move for a long moment. Then I slowly lowered my arm. "Leave, " I said again. "You won't find what you're looking for here." 

I watched impassively as the entire team filed out through a hole in the wall. The higher ups all took the time to glare at me one last time before going. 

When they were gone, I flipped the external speakers off and sighed, sitting back in my seat, not realizing how tense I had been. The Unit relaxed as well, throwing one arm against the wall and resting my head against it. 

"How did it go?" Tashi's voice cut into the silence. 

"They'll be back," I replied. "They weren't too impressed when I squashed their heavy-duty gun and the gunner, and they were even less impressed when their handguns couldn't affect me and I made them leave. They'll be back." 

I heard him sigh, relieved. "Thank goodness," he murmured. "So, is there a Unit there?" 

I straightened up and took a step towards the covered Unit. "Yes. I'm just checking now to see which one." 

I reached out a hand, saw it in my viewscreen and froze, my mind reeling. 

"Whoa," I whispered, my eyes widening. 

"What?" 

"I just realized...." 

"Realized what?" 

"I keep thinking of the Unit as myself...like it really was me.' 

_But I am. I am a part of you, and you are a part of me._

I took my hand off the controls and sat back in my seat, turning the internal speakers off and closing my eyes. I sat there for several moments, my mind utterly blank. 

_You can't keep me out. We are a part of each other. There is nothing to worry about._

"There is plenty to worry about!" I cried. "I didn't want to kill anybody! I didn't really want this -- " 

_Yes, you did. You've always wanted freedom from them. I could tell that right from the start._

"How?" 

_When you first stepped into me, without the entry plug. I wanted to close up around you, but I need the plug. You are so close to my first pilot..._

I wanted to cry. I buried my face in my hands, willing myself not to talk to it anymore. I couldn't resist, though. 

"Who was your first pilot?" 

The thought softened. _My son, Shinji._

I thought that over for a bit. "How can a machine have children, much less human children?" My internal speaker light was flashing urgently. I ignored it. 

_I wasn't always in this body. I was human once. And even this body isn't completely mechanical. This is just a protective armor of sorts. Part of me is organic._

"Then how did you survive this long?" 

I had the distinct impression that the Unit was laughing. _I'm not too sure myself. It must have something to do with how I was created. I was never told the details. And now, young one, you must uncover that Unit._ The presence slowly extracted itself from me, staying in the back of my mind. 

Recovering my senses, I put my hands on the controls. "Alright, let's do it," I said quietly. I pictured the Unit taking hold of the sheet and pulling it off, which it did. It was easy to fall back into the thought pattern that I was actually the Unit and not just plain old Mei. The cloth fell away, and my sensors read what I couldn't see in the dark. 

I flipped on the internal speakers again. Tashi was in the middle of a tirade. "-alright? Mei, please, speak to me!" 

"I'm here," I replied softly. "And I found another Unit." 

"Oh thank heavens. Why did you turn off your speakers?" 

"I needed to think a bit." 

"Another Unit? Which one?" 

I paused for a moment, my eyes glued to the viewscreen. "Unit-00." 

There was a longer pause on his end. "What?" 

"Unit-00, Tashi. They almost had hold of Unit-00." 

* * *

It was quite awhile before Unit-00 was even remotely operational. 

It was in far worse shape than Unit-01 had been. I found it kneeling, and I remember thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that it was awfully short for a Unit, seeing as the computer had said they were all around the same size. The reason why was obvious -- part of the leg was missing. It looked as though a lot of the structural support was missing. One arm was completely off, torn halfway up the upper arm. The rest was lying beside it, and it looked as though someone had started repairs to get it reattached. And it was just as dusty as Unit-01 had been, if not more. I think the fact that an air shaft was some hundred feet above it had a lot to do with that fact. 

The entry plug was lying half-buried under some rubble that was probably created by the hole that the work force had blasted into the shaft. I cleared it off and lifted it out easily in Unit-01, though I felt like I was commiting sacrelige...the EVA's had been designed as Earth's last defense against the Angels, not as a hard labor force. The Unit assured me it didn't mind, but I still felt odd about it... 

The entry plug was a bit battered up. The front end was definitely going to need some repairs before it could be used. That took both me and Tashi -- me out of the Unit -- an entire week to get it any where near usable. Then it took a few more days to get the manual door release working. 

Inside, it was exactly the same as Unit-01's was. It even had the thought sensors and pilot suit in the seat. The suit was very obviously female, but by then, I had grown very attached to the one I was wearing and I even considered it mine. We were lucky to search the other shafts, finding a cage empty of a Unit but having an entry plug. The plug said Unit-03, but the Unit was listed in the computer as 'lost'. The plug had a suit and thought sensors in it, but we left the sensors there. The suit was far more to Tashi's liking; it fit him like mine fit me -- tight without being uncomfortable, and made him look fantastic. 

I had seen pictures of the original pilots, but only as their security shots had depicted them -- sullen children who never seemed to smile. The files had contained a head shot and one full body, two of each if you counted the same sideways shot as a different picture. The original pilot of EVA-00 was a sad looking girl with blue or purple hair (it seemed to change between the two shots), red eyes and dressed in a pretty blue dress with a white blouse. The file displayed her name as Rei Ayanami. The original pilot of EVA-01 was Shinji Ikari, and I could see why the Unit was proud of him, though it never came out and said that. He had a quiet determination and courage about his face which was reflected in his dark eyes. He was dressed in dark pants and a dark shirt with a white one over top. The pilot of EVA-03 was another boy, taller than Shinji, and labelled as Touji. He had dark hair and eyes as well, dressed in a black running suit. He had a kind of arrogance in his picture, but even I could tell that he was sad about something. I later found out that he had no parents and his sister had died in the Angel attack on Tokyo-3 in which Shinji had first piloted EVA-01. I also found info on the other two human pilots, Asuka for EVA-02 and Kaworu for EVA-04, but their pictures were lost or corrupted and were unreadable. A few days after I had found those, I managed to hack into the classified files of NERV, where pictures of the pilots in their suits were found. Rei had gained an air of competence and determination, Shinji looked damned near impossible to stop, Touji had the look of one you didn't want to cross swords with (I don't remember where I heard that line...it must have been something Tashi said once) and I saw pictures of Asuka and Kaworu for the first time. Asuka was wearing a crimson pilot suit, her brown hair pinned back by matching thought sensors on her head. She had a look of foolish confidence on her face. Kaworu was very serious, though he had a dashing smile on his face. His eyes were the same colour as Rei's, though his hair was grey. I thought that was odd for a fourteen-year-old... 

Tashi joined me at that point, placing a hand on my shoulder and leaning forward slightly. "Who's that?" he asked, tapping the screen with a gloved hand. We had both taken to wearing the pilot suits nearly constantly; they were very comfortable and our own clothes were wearing out. We had no idea where we could get more. 

"Kaworu," I replied absently. "The original pilot of EVA-04." 

"I wonder if that one is still here," he mused quietly. "Is there pictures of the pilots of 00 and 01?" 

"Of course," I murmured and brought the pictures up without looking at the keyboard. First 01, then 00. Tashi drew in his breath sharply when Rei's picture flashed onto the screen. 

"What is it?" I asked, feeling him tense up. 

"I've seen her before," he replied. "In my dreams." 

I frowned a bit. "You've seen her in your dreams?" 

He nodded. "She never says anything, but she is always trying to show me something. I can never see it, and just when I think I can, I wake up." 

I pondered that. "Well," I said briskly. closing the files and shutting the computer off. "Are you ready to try it out?" I stood up and turned to him. He searched my face for a moment and then smiled. 

"You betcha." 

I smiled back and then led him from the room. It was a bit of a walk to the shaft that held Unit-00, but I had planned for that and had left Unit-01 waiting as transportation. I climbed into the plug, closed the door and sat down just before it twisted itself down into the tunnel behind the panel. Then I connected with the Unit and offered the huge hand to Tashi. He climbed into the palm, and I curled the fingers in protectively before taking off towards the far shaft. It wasn't far by EVA, but it would have taken a human on foot -- especially with all the rubble that was still lying around -- at least a couple of hours. 

Unit-00 had taken so many more repairs. When we had reattached the arm, I held it up in one hand, in line with the part that was still attached to the body, while holding Tashi in the other as he welded a lot of the connections back together. The leg repairs had gone much the same way. 

Today would be the first time Tashi had attempted contact with Unit-00. The files all said that it was volatile and even tried to kill the pilot a couple of times. That told me that it had a personality as strong as Unit-01's and I was a little reluctant to let Tashi try and pilot it. I didn't know what I would do if it decided to kill him... 

He got into the entry plug as soon as I set him down. Once the door was closed, I picked up the plug as levelly as I could and got it lined up for insertion into the Unit. "Here we go," I whispered to myself, and placed it inside the little bit it needed. 

Nothing happened. 

I frowned, and shoved a little on the back end. It slid in then, twisting around, although it did go grudgingly. Once it was fully in, the back panel slid closed over it. I waited a few tense moments. Then the left arm twitched once, twice, a third time. The Unit lurched to its feet. I jumped to mine easily, backing up two steps and dropping my arms loosely to my sides. Unit-00 turned jerkily to face me, looking at me unblinkingly with it's one eye. I turned my internal speakers on. "How is it?" I asked. 

Tashi took a long moment to reply. "Wierd," he said finally. "I can sense it in here, but it refuses to fully join with me. I think -- " The speakers suddenly cut out. 

"Tashi?" I said, worried. "Tashi, what's going on? Why aren't you on?" 

I was surprised out of my skin then as Unit-00 leaped forward with sudden agility and attacked me. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	7. At the End of the World (6)

It knocked me over at first -- not very far, of course, but it did place it's hands on my shoulders and shifted it's weight to overbalance me. I started to go down, but I had been in hand-to-hand fights for years, and my instincts kicked in. 

I grabbed the other Unit by it's forearms, near the elbows, and as I went down, I shifted my own weight further into my legs. I twisted, folding one leg up beneath me and landing on my hip, Using the other leg as a kind of lever, I jammed it up against the Unit-00's body and threw it over my head. Neither of us had let go of the other, and I pushed myself up and over in a gravity-defying movement, landing squarely on Unit-00 beneath me. 

The other Unit was still for a moment, then it tried to throw me off. I had expected that and prepared for it, so it didn't have a chance. I held it down until it finally stopped trying to fight me. 

Tashi's speakers came back on. "It's over," he said wearily. 

"What the hell hapened?" I asked flatly. 

"It's volatile. The personality is very strong, and I get the feeling that it doesn't really like anyone." There was a pause, and then he sighed. "You said this was easy," he said, making it not quite an accusation. 

"It was. For me," I said. "I never once said it would be the same for you, if the Unit would even accept you. Are you up to trying again?" 

Another pause, then he sighed. "Alright," he said resignedly. "If you would kindly get off of me?" 

I got up, bending over to haul Unit-00 to it's feet. When it was upright, I got around in behind it to hold it there. "You have to relax, open yourself up to the Unit," I instructed softly. "That's all that should be the same. Now turn off your speakers and try again." There was a click as he did so. 

I sighed and waited, holding Unit-00 upright with both arms. I wondered if it would work... 

It didn't. Unit-00 went beserk again. 

It didn't try to attack me again, which was a relief. It did try to break free of the grip I held on it, which I refused to loose. It took a shorter time to stop, but it also came more suddenly. I nearly fell under the dead weight of the Unit, managing to stop our fall only by kneeling awfully fast, leaving a nice big divot in the cage floor. Even then, Unit-00's forehead cracked against the ground. 

"Mei?" Tashi asked softly. He sounded tired or scared; I wasn't sure which. 

"Yes?" 

"I want out. I don't like this." 

"Does your entry plug release work?" 

Silence in which I could hear him hitting buttons in the background. "Nope. It's dead." 

That was the moment Unit-00 came to life again. I was really off-guard this time, though in hindsight I really shouldn't have been. Because I was surprised, it managed to throw me off and ran to the far corner, clawing at the walls, leaving gouges deeply into the cement as though it was trying to climb out...but it was completely ignoring the half-repaired hole in the outside wall and the EVA-sized hole leading back to the rest of NERV. 

I sat back and watched it, wondering what kind of personality would make anything reak out like that. 

_I knew them,_ Unit-01 cut into my thoughts. It's voice sounded very sad. _They weren't very stable._ The voice faded away. 

"I can tell," I said, my eyes glued to the viewscreen. "Wait a minute! What do you mean, 'they'?" 

On the screen, Unit-00 started punching the wall. I decided that it had run amok long enough, and I got up to stop it. 

Not that it was doing itself much damage. Huge chunks of the wall were coming off, but I knew that the wall was several meters thick before reaching any other open space. Maybe the hands and fingers would be scratched up bad and need some repairs, but nothing hugely serious. 

It took quite a bit muscle to get Unit-00 pinned again. I managed to get it faced down and forced open the entry plug access, pulling the plug out. The Unit went still with the plug removed, so I got off of it and set the plug down, upright. Then I waited tensely, heaving a sigh of relief when the door popped open and Tashi half-stumbled, half-fell out of the plug. i put my hand down for him, which he climbed up into, and I raised it until it was behind my head. Then I released my own entry plug. 

The plug twisted out until it was mostly out of the hole for it, but not enough that it would fall over or out, or slip back in, yet I could get in and out of the plug as I pleased. 

I waited for the LCL to drain before opening the door and crawling over the back of Unit-01's neck until I could join Tashi in the palm of the huge hand. 

He was laying down, curled up tightly on his side with his back to me, and he was shuddering. I approached him as carefully and quietly as I could, kneeling next to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. The muscle beneath my hand twitched -- the only indication that he had felt it. 

"Tashi?" I asked softly. "Are you alright?" 

He made a sound like a whimper. 

"I guess not. Okay, that's enough for today. I'm going to put you in the plug with me, then I'm going to straighten this up, and then we're going back. Sounds good? I thought so." I didn't wait for him to reply before bending down to pick him up. I managed to pry one of his arms out from around his legs and hooked it over my shoulders, hauling him to his feet. 

By no small feat, I managed to get him over the back of the Unit's neck and into the entry plug, behind my seat. Then I reactivated the controls, and the plug twisted back down inside. 

I could sense that the Unit didn't like having Tashi inside with me, but it didn't say anything. As an afterthought, I climbed up into my chair, leaned around it and plucked the thought sensors off of Tashi's head. I turned back around and dropped them in my lap as I settled into my seat. Then I got to work. 

Unit-01 didn't function as well with Tashi in the plug, I discovered. I figured that the thoughts running through his head at the moment were so "loud" that the Unit could pick them up without the help from the sensors, and they were disrupting the workings of the Unit. 

I stood up and promptly fell over, because of the thought disruption from Tashi. I had to readjust my own thoughts and got up again, this time only overbalancing myself, and nearly falling over. I wasn't sure if I should attempt to pick Unit-00 up and "put it away," as it were, when I could hardly stand up straight. But the other Unit was far too important to just leave lying there, like it had drowned or something.... 

It was another great feat to get Unit-00 upright and back into it's "holder." Then I picked up Unit-00's entry plug and stumbled my way back to Central Control. 

Once there, I set the plug down as close to CC as I could get, locked Unit-01 back into it's own "holder" and ejected the entry plug. Then I got me and Tashi out, still having to all but carry him back to our living space. 

I set him down in the sleeping area, laying him down carefully on our blankets. He stared up at the high ceiling blankly, his breath coming a little faster than it normally did. I wasn't a medic, but it worried me, I waved my hand in front of his face; he didn't even blink. I frowned, got up and went to get a cup of water from our supply. When I came back, I dribbled a bit on his face; he still didn't react. I got him into a sitting position and made him drink the water, which he did, but I could tell it was an automatic reaction. I sighed and laid him back down, hitting the button on his cuff to release his suit from his body. He sighed a little and closed his eyes. His breathing evened out a bit, and I relaxed. Even so, I pulled the closing of his suit apart and started to get it off of him. He was difficult to undress when he was unconscious; his limbs moved like they were made of rubber, but he was heavy. 

I was glad I decided to take his suit off for him when I pulled one of his arms out of its sleeve and my hand brushed his. It was freezing. That worried me too. I got the rest of his suit off and pulled the blankets up over his chilled body. Then I brushed his hair back from his forehead before going back to CC. 

It felt wierd, doing something in CC without having Tashi nearby doing something else. Yet I turned the computer on and sat down, my eyes locked to the screen... 

I pulled up all the information I could find on Unit-00 and it's original pilot, Rei Ayanami, complete with pictures, graphs, charts and any number of things that made little or no sense. 

I must have spent at least three hours there, there was so much information. Tashi and Rei were very much alike, whch came as a bit of a surprise, though I suppose it shouldn't have. They were both quiet, introspective and highly independant individuals. Maybe that was why Unit-00 reacted to him that way...I sat back in my chair when I finished, a chart of Rei's synchronization rates with Unit-00 on the screen. I stared at it without seeing it. It was a few moments before I sat up again and pulled up all the info on Unit-01 and Shinji Ikari, as well as the tiny bit Tashi had entred on me. Mostly, I wanted to compare my synchronization chart with the original pilot's. 

It was amazing; the rates were very similar, though Shinji's chart had much more information on it that mine, for the simple reason that he'd been in Unit-01 longer than I had so far. And I didn't have a bunch of executives hanging over my shoulder making all sorts of notes and doing all sorts of tests. 

I sat there looking at the two charts overlapping each other for a long moment, and then I started to pull up all the information on how the Units and their pilots had been tested. 

I was halfway into that, waiting for the system to finish opening a paticularily large file when Tashi put in an appearnce. He came up behind me, laying a hand on my shoulder before pullingup another chair. I spun mine around to face him, worried a little by the faint circles under his eyes, the clouded look of them and the vague expression on his face. I noticed that he hadn't put his suit back on, or even bothered to get dressed again, though he had wrapped a blanket around his body tightly. 

"How do you feel?" I asked, leaning forward to lightly touch his arm. 

He flinched. "I don't know," he replied, avoiding my eyes. He sounded tired and confused. "That was...like nothing else. I'm not sure I want to go through that again." 

"I'm sorry," I said. "I should have done all those tests that you did on me when we found Unit-01's entry plug." 

He looked at me briefly. His eyes were tortured for a moment; then they clouded over again and he looked away. "Just...let me recover a bit first." 

I smiled. "Of course." I turned back to the computer just as it finished pulling up the file I wanted. 

It was another hour before I was finished with the computer. By that time, my eyes were hurting and my leg muscles had begun to cramp. I sat way back in my chair, stretching my arms above my head and stretching my legs out beneath the desk. Then I pushed the chair back and stood up, stretching again. Tashi stood up as well, although more slowly. He still had that haunted look, and he pulled the blanket a little bit tighter around himself. 

I looked at him for a moment. Then I stepped towards him and pulled him into a hug. His entire body stiffened like a board for a brief moment, but then he relaxed and opened the blanket up, pulling me inside of it as he returned the hug. 

I rested my head on his shoulder, knowing somehow that he needed this at the moment. Afterwards, in a minute, or an hour, or maybe even the next day, he'd be his usual, remote self. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	8. At the End of the World (7)

Tashi was doing better. It had been a month or so since he had first tried operating Unit-00. Since then, I had been doing all sorts of tests with him, mostly by throwing him into the entry plug and monitoring it on the computer. I had brought Unit-00 into the same space as Unit-01, so the "connection" between him and the Unit was a little more complete. And he was doing better. 

It was just too bad that Unit-00 was stolen. 

It happened the night before our "big test", where I would put Tashi and the entry plug back inside Unit-00. I had moved both the Unit and the plug back to it's original cage, though looking back on it, I can't see why I did that. So the next day, when we went to the cage to do the test, the Unit-00 was gone. 

The thieves had left plenty of evidence as to where they had taken it, and how they had managed to do so. There was big tire tracks, a lot of rubble had been cleared away, and there were so many footprints...I was rather put out to find that Unit-00 had been taken. I had been all for going after them, but Tashi managed to convince me that all in all, it wasn't really worth it. So I sulked about the loss of Unit-00 for a few days, and then Tashi and I went about the rest of NERV, trying to find anything else we could use. 

I had been all set to go searching through the other cages to find a useable EVA. Tashi said that it wasn't really top priority, and then he pointed out what else we could be doing. There was still the power source we were using to be fixed and set up properly, the computers to get running, not just my little terminal, an area where we could set up a proper living space for ourselves, plus we had to make another food run and get some more water. In light of all this, I had to agree, however reluctantly. 

It was weeks before we could get back to the cages. Tashi and I spent many, many sleepless nights getting the main power generator back on its feet, as it were. It was disconnected for three days straight as we rearranged the wiring properly. Then it was back up and running smoothly. Tashi and I had cheered our success and then promptly fallen over and started sleeping. 

Our next task was the computers, the main ones. One was already running, but on minimal levels. That took a bit longer than the generator, perhaps three times longer. Once the computers were back up, I had to spend another day or two weeding out all the corrupted files and fixing what I could. I just hoped that I didn't do worse damage to them than had already been done... 

While I was working on the corrupted computer files, Tashi had gone out exploring and found some rooms where we could live, close to Central Control. There was a room with actual beds in it, though they would need some serious cleaning. They were covered in dust and pieces of the ceiling, and who knew what else. Another room was just outside with some dusty and almost unrecognizable furniture. When we cleaned it off, we found a table or two, a chair and a longer chair that Tashi called a couch. Then we found a closet with blankets and pillows, which was probably the biggest find of all, next to the Units. So for the first time in close to ten years, I slept in actual bed with real blankets and a real pillow, not some moth-eaten covering and a hard lump of what used to be a pillow. The only problem was, I was so used to sleeping next to Tashi that I found it hard to fall asleep without him next to me. 

Our next mission was to find food, which I had to take Unit-01 to the surface to find. It took the better part of a day, but I finally found a dried goods warehouse, judging by the weathered and almost unreadable lettering on the side of the building, which still had it's walls intact. I got out of Unit-01 to gather what I could, because I wanted to leave it intact. In the end, I had taken enough to last us a few more months. 

While I had been gone, Tashi had gathered more water and stored it in some wierd looking boxes. I didn't question it; water was a necessity, and however we could get it, as long as it didn't run out or spill, was a good thing. 

After that we had to spend another week or two fixing up our living space. The ceilings were rather untrustworthy-looking and there was so much dust and mess everywhere.... 

Then, I could go back to the cages and search through them. 

It was a fascinating search. I'd had the opportunity to go through them before, and I had found the other six EVA's that Unit-01 registered as there. I hadn't had time them, however, to check and see which ones were which. Now I had that opportunity. 

But first, I had to clear away a lot of rubble. 

The EVA bay, where I stored Unit-01 most of the time, was just covered in debris from the ceiling and the walls and from who-knew-what-else. I used Unit-01 to clear away the big chunks of rock and cement, and then I attempted to make doorways or at least door frames out of the holes I had bashed into the walls and EVA cages so long ago. Tashi had found some white powder that made up a wierd and sloppy-looking paste when it was mixed with water. It was supposed to make some sort of glue, I think...it didn't work very well, but at least it held the smaller pieces of the walls in place when I thumped around. 

Once those were stabilized, I went to the covered lumps that were the other EVA Units and brought them out of their cages into the EVA bay. I waited until they were all there before removing their covers, even though it took two days and ate me from the inside out with curiousity. 

And then, on the third day, Tashi and I woke up nice and early and went to the EVA bay to uncover the seven mysterious EVA Units. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	9. At the End of the World (8)

"So what do you think?" Tashi asked, staring up at the impossibly huge, covered Units. 

"About what?" I replied, mimicking his pose. 

"How do we uncover them? I know you've been looking forward to this for awhile, and I have to admit, it's been getting to me too." I sensed his smile, rather than saw it. "How about we just run up and pull covers off?" He turned to me, and when I looked at him, he was grinning, an unrestrained glint of incredible amusement in his eyes. 

This was shocking to me. Tashi had always been quiet and restrained, and he almost never laughed. But I returned the grin and laughed. "Yeah!" I cried, jumping up into the air. Then I ran to the nearest EVA, took hold of the cover and yanked. 

It slid off easily and covered me in a dusty heap, and it took me twenty minutes at least to fight my way out from underneath it. When I emerged, I was covered in dust and pieces of debris, and I was coughing horriedly, trying to get some clean air into my lungs. By that time, Tashi had already pulled off the other covers of the EVA's, having had more sense not to get underneath the silly things. 

"Are you okay?" he asked, helping me to my feet as I coughed some more. 

"Sure," I replied, smiling at him. "I like to get underneath huge sheets of dusty cloth every now and then just to remind myself how nice it is to breathe." 

He grinned again, brushing my hair back with one hand and pulling me into a one-armed hug. I returned it as best as I could, coughing one more time before looking up at the uncovered EVA's. 

They were an impressive sight. Unit-01 stood at the far end by itself, as always. I wasn't sure if I'd ever let any other Unit get that close to it, especially when I didn't know if the other Units would react like Unit-00 did... 

In the middle was a red one, much like Unit-01. On either side of it were three more Units, all the same. They were white. But other than that, it was like trying to see a flag when you were at the base of a cliff. 

"Can't tell much from here, huh?" I said, trying hard to forget that Tashi hadn't let go of me yet. 

He shook his head slightly. "Nope," he agreed. "Why don't you get in that Unit of yours and get a closer look. 

"Good idea," I said, slipping out from under his arm and running across the bay to get to Unit-01. 

It was perhaps ten minutes and a very long stair climb later that I was climbing into the entry plug of Unit-01. Less than a minute after that, the plug was filled with LCL and my view of the outside was on, only that much bigger due to the size of the EVA. 

I released the clamps that held it in and stepped out, shaking the ground -- as usual. I just couldn't seem to step quietly whenever I was in Unit-01... I walked across the bay in a half-dozen steps, stopping next to Tashi and taking my first real look at the other EVA's. 

The red one was the nicest-looking one of the whole lot. It had four eyes, two mouths, though one looked like it had been broken, shoulder blades like Unit-01's and no horn on the end of its nose. That was a shame, really, but by this point I was predjudiced against all the other Unit's having been with Unit-01 for nearly three months now. Compared to the other Units, the red one was gorgeous. It needed repairs of course -- they all did -- and it was the least damaged of the seven. 

Now the other six...they all looked the same. They reminded me of pictures Tashi had shown me from one of his storybooks when we were children, pictures of things he said were demons. Their heads were smooth -- relatively of course; one was missing the entire right side and two more had the tops crushed in. The faces were absolutely featureless except for a wide, grinning mouth, the outer edges painted bright red, even after all this time. It looked as though they had been eating something that had been alive...They were missing the shoulder blades that characterized Unit-01 and the red one. Overall, they were kind of scary... 

I flipped on the external speakers. "They'll need repairs of course," I said and I could hear my voice echo through the bay. "But you really have to see these..." I knelt and put my hand down for Tashi. He climbed on and I lifted my hand, standing up as I did so, until he was eye level with the other Units. 

I heard him gasp and I saw his body stiffen. "They're kinda of ugly, aren't they?" he said after a moment, one hand pressed to the collar of his pilot suit. 

I shrugged inside the EVA; the movement wasn't copied outside. "I dunno. If you think about it, so's Unit-01." 

He looked up at Unit-01 and grinned. "Yeah, it is kind of ugly, isn't it?" 

I raised the Unit's free hand and waggled a finger at him. "Be nice now," I teased. 

He stuck his tongue out at me. 

I sighed, knowing it would be heard outside. "So what do we do now?" I asked, dropping my hand back to my side. 

"We get started," he replied. "If you can set me down on the red one, I'll see how much work needs to be done to that jaw while you go fetch all the rest of the equipment." 

"Yes, sir!" I replied, stepping up to the red EVA and letting Tashi off on the shoulder. Then I turned to the other end of the EVA bay and went to fetch the huge mass of ropes and pulleys that we used to clamber up and down the gigantic sides of the EVA Units. 

* * *

"Damnit," I swore as the Unit shut down for the fourth time. 

The plug went dark, and I sat back in my seat, sighing heavily. We had been having power troubles all week, and we just couldn't figure out what was wrong. All the contacts and power supplies had checked out all right... 

The power came back on, and I quickly took advantage of it, taking Unit-01 back to it's cage, locking it into place and ejecting the plug. There was just no point to trying to keep up with it... 

Back at the command center, Tashi was staring at a printout of what looked like a topographical map. I didn't know what he used for the few printouts he made, and I didn't think that I really wanted to know. He'd made a comment once about borrowing someone's supplies, and I just decided to ignore it. 

"Look at this, Mei," he said as I closed the door, pulling the thought sensors off my head. I crossed the room to where he sat, combing my hair out with my fingers. Then I leaned over his shoulder, my eyes running over the map. 

It was actually a very nice map. It was the colour of the printout material -- a kind of yellowish -- covered in wiggly black lines. There were small coloured dots with numbers and a "+" or a "-" next to them, and I took those to read as heights of the landscape. Though where the zero was for these markings, I hadn't the foggiest idea. There were more coloured marks with Tashi's writing next to them. 

"What's this for?" I asked. 

"It's a topgraphical map of the surrounding area," he replied. "See, here's the lake." He pointed at one spot on the map. 

I shook my head; all the squiggly lines and coloured markings confused my eyes. "It makes no sense to me," I told him. "That's why you sit up here with these things all day," I continued as he half-turned to explain it to me, "and I sit in an entry plug all day. You're the thinker; I'm the doer. Let's just leave it at that, alright?" 

He shrugged and turned back to the map. "Okay, I think I know what's been causing all these power fluctuations." 

"Oh really?" That perked my interest. It was hard to get anything done when the power didnt work. 

"Yes really. Over here, by this mark here - " He pointed at a pale blue "X" next to a yellow "-1450". "There's an old tower of some sort there. I think it may have been hit in that last electrical storm, and its been leaching power since then." 

I thought about it for a bit. "It makes sense," I said slowly. The only knowledge I had of this sort of thing was what Tashi had told me; and the reasons I had given him -- he was the thinker, not me. "What do you want to do about it then?" 

"I want you to take Unit-01 and dismantle it, any way you can. The easiest would probably be to just knock it over and then stomp on it for a bit." 

"But how? I can't keep the Unit operational for more than ten minutes with the fluctuations we've been having." 

"There is...one way," he said, cautiously. "I didn't mention it before, because i would rather it be used only in emergencies..." 

I waited patiently; he would get to the point sometime today. 

"The Unit has a back-up power supply, enough for five minutes. You release the umbilical cable; the back-up kicks in. But it's only for five minutes. Then the Unit shuts right down." He leaned forward over the map then, making a small mark with a pale pink pencil. 

"Where did you get those?" I asked absently. I straightened and stretched tiredly. 

"Get what?" he replied, just as absently. "Oh, these pencils? I found them in a storage room." He swiveled around in his chair. "You look dead. You should go get some sleep." 

"I'm not tired," I lied, yawning. 

Tashi smiled and rose to his feet. "Sure you're not. Come on; I'll help you into bed." 

"I can do it myself," I protested, though it lacked any sort of conviction. I yawned again. 

"Mei," he said simply, catching my chin in his hand and tilting my face up to his. "You work too hard. Go get some sleep." 

"Okay fine," I said, sounding a little grumpy to even my own ears. Maybe it was time I had a bit more sleep than I had been getting... 

Without waiting any longer, I turned and left him alone to his maps while I went to bed. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	10. At the End of the World (9)

Unit-00 was returned to us that night. 

I was sleeping very soundly, and I was having troubled dreams that eluded memory. There was a huge crash that showered parts of the ceiling down on me; the noise and the crumbling of plaster and cement and other choice pieces of the ceiling falling on me woke me up. 

I got out of bed hurriedly, taking time only to pull on my pilot suit before dashing out of my room, still struggling to get the thing closed. I ran all the way to CC, hitting the suction button on my left wrist moments before bursting into the room. 

Tashi was brushing ceiling bits from himself and the map, alternately. He looked pretty sour. 

"What's going on?" I asked. 

"I don't know," he said irritably. "Whatever it was, it was big, and it made a mess on my map." He looked up as the room shuddered again. "Damnit," he swore. "It's not natural, either, I'll bet. I'll track it; you see if the Unit will respond. If you have to, blast the umbilical cable away." 

"Got it," I replied, dashing from the room. 

It was somewhat easier to get in the EVA from CC, seeing as i had to go down some stairs to get level with it. Not much later, the Unit was active again. 

"It looks like it's coming from the northwest, Mei," Tashi said once I turned on the radio to let him know that I was active. "In one of the launching shafts." He sounded puzzled. 

"The launching shaft?" I repeated, also puzzled. 

"That's what the sensors say," he assured me. 

I shrugged. "Okay. I'll be back in a jiffy." With that, I disengaged the safety locks and went to investigate. 

* * *

The power had went out yet again, and I was now operating on four minutes of temporary power. The ceiling continued to crumble in bits and pieces, and a part of my mind worried about the structure falling in on us. Then another part told that part to shut up -- NERV had been here for who-knew-how-long, so it wasn't likely to collapse anytime soon. That didn't stop me from worrying about being crushed, or -- more so -- about Tashi being crushed. 

I couldn't let that kind of thinking bother me, because it was starting to reflect in the Unit's performance, so I started singing -- horrendously off-key -- to myself. I didn't know what I was singing; it was just a bunch of words to me. 

I reached the northwest launching shaft moments later, tracking the disturbance by the amount of noise and destruction going on. Peering up into the shaft, I could tell that the innermost doors were just about ready to burst, so I stepped to one side of them and flattened myself as best as I could against the wall. 

The doors burst downwards, landing on the floor with a great clatter, and Unit-00 fell down after them. 

I was surprised. I suppose I shouldn't have been, looking back on it, but I was. I didn't think Unit-00 would ever be returned to us. Yet here it was, and somehow, I knew that it wasn't here with the express purpose of rejoining me and Tashi. 

The Unit had fallen in a jumble of arms and legs, but it righted itself quickly. I stayed absolutely still, hoping that it wouldn't notice me. It didn't; it started to walk in Tashi's direction. I followed behind, matching it's footsteps exactly. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't have enough time; my counter read two minutes left. 

Unit-00 paused at a intersection in the EVA-sized passageways; I took the opportunity and jumped on it from behind, knocking it flat to the ground. The pilot was surprised enough, I guess, to not fight back. Whoever it was had only started to fight back when I pulled up the back panel covering the entry plug and yanked it out. Unit-00 shuddered once and lay still. I grabbed the plug in my hand, got up and ran back to CC as fast as I could, the counter now reading less than a minute. 

I was lucky, I got back to CC and knelt, laying the plug down on the floor and ejecting my own just as the counter ran out. Unit-01 froze in place, one hand still on the other entry plug. 

The power had come back on, it looked like; Tashi joined me on the floor, carrying a large battery-powered lamp in case it went out again. "Power cord first," he yelled up to me. Waving to show that I had heard him, I jumped down to the floor, grabbed the power cable for Unit-01 in both hands and started dragging it back. Luckily, it wasn't far. Tashi helped me drag it back to the Unit, lift it up to the back and guide it back into place. I got back into the EVA, let the other plug go and cupped my hands around it and Tashi so that when he opened it, whoever the pilot was wouldn't get away. 

I needn't have worried, it turned out. Tashi opened the plug, the LCL pouring out around his legs, and crawled inside cautiously. He was inside longer than seemed necessary and when he came out, he was carrying a semi-concious girl, no older than me. I lifted my hands, letting him take her away. 

I went and fetched Unit-00, setting it up in the cage next to mine. Locking it in place, I put Unit-01 back into it's cage and went to join Tashi. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	11. At the End of the World (10)

"What did you think you were DOING???" Tashi yelled. 

I only stared at him, my eyes wide with shock. Tashi had never yelled at me. He bent over the girl again, forcing open her eyelid and peering into her eye. 

"Well?" he demanded, glancing back over his shoulder at me. 

"What I was supposed to do," I replied. 

"Oh," he said, sarcastically, "so what you're supposed to do is put EVA pilots into states of shock, hmm?" 

I was quiet for a few moments. "I don't understand why you're yelling at me," I whispered. 

Tashi turned to me then. "Because you don't think, Mei. You never think before doing anything. Didn't it even occur to you what may happen when the pilot of a Unit is torn out of the EVA that way before they have a chance to disengage properly? The psychological shock -- it could kill them!" He turned his back to me again, checking the other pilot again. "Damnit," he swore, under his breath, though at what I couldn't tell. 

"Mei -- " I heard him start. 

But I didn't respond. I had turned and walked out of the room. I even started running down the hallway when he called after me. Whatever he wanted me for, it could wait, I decided, ignoring the tears that burned my eyes. The image I had built of Tashi in my mind -- the kind, caring Tashi who was always there for me -- had been shattered. 

* * *

I had sought refuge in Unit-01, sitting in the entry plug and sliding into the Unit, but not activating it. I sat in the seat, the crossbar pulled up across my lap, my arms drawn tightly across my chest, my head bent. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I felt like I was just an shell, wanting all these needs, and being unable to express them. 

_What is bothering you? _

I was used to the Unit's conciousness popping in and out at random by now. "Tashi," I said shortly. 

_Ah. I never liked him. His thought patterns are too organized. Rei's were, but she put them out better._

I ignored it. 

_Why do you even put up with him? I could never understand that. I don't know why you would even --_

"Would you shut up?!" I all but shouted. "If you must know," I continued, quietly, "I stay with him because he is the only person who ever cared enough about me to make sure that I never got hurt." 

_Yet you hurt now._

I was long in answering. "Yes," I said finally. "He... Why am I explaining this to you?" 

_Because you want to...and because you need to._

* * *

It was sometime later that I was able to return into the main complex of rooms we had cleared out. I had explained what was wrong to the Unit, wondering the whole time about explaining anything to a being I couldn't even be sure was real. But I felt better after getting the story out of my system, and I sat there in the entry plug for a while longer before feeling brave enough to dare Tashi's temper again. 

My luck: he wasn't around, and I wasn't about to go look for him. I just got myself something to eat for dinner, picked up a very worn book that we had found sealed in a airtight box, so it wasn't in too bad a shape, and still readable, and went to my room. I lay there on my bed, reading (or trying to at least; I still couldn't read that well) and just waiting to feel tired enough to attempt sleep. Only once did I hear footsteps in the hallway outside. I stayed absolutely still as the footsteps paused, and then they moved on. I let out a sigh of relief. I could at least make it through this one night... 

* * *

The next day, Tashi burst into my room, demanding loudly that I get up now, thank you very much, and that we had an emergency, so I'd better get going and blahblahblah. I ignored him, or tried to, as I hadn't slept very well or long, because sleep evaded me for some time and then I was troubled by dreams. 

When he started to shake me, I just mumbled for him to leave me alone, but then he grabbed my arm roughly and hauled me out of bed, ignoring my state of undress. 

"MEI!!!!" he shouted in my ear. "GET UP!!!!!" 

Awake now, no small part of me indifferent to the freezing floor, I stared up at him, wondering what I had done now to deserve such rough treatment. Then I saw the look in his eyes. 

He was afraid. Very afraid. And I was scared and confused all in one moment. 

"What's wrong?" I asked, trying to control my wavering voice and being largely unsuccessful. 

"Everything," he moaned, waving his hands nervously, a gesture I had never seen him use. "The entry plug for Unit-00 is badly damaged -- " and here he glared at me briefly " -- but the pilot is the main reason. She's in some kind of neural shock and I don't know what to do!!" 

My Tashi didn't know what to do. This was a surprise in itself, but I covered it well. Instead of staring at him, dumbstruck as I felt, I got up from the floor and pulled my plug suit on, thinking brifely that I desperately needed to take a bath. "Let me see her," I said dispassionately. I couldn't say why I felt no emotion to this strange girl. 

That quickly changed when I saw her. She had been stripped down (which was to the better, as she hadn't been wearing the proper suit anyway) and covered with a thin blanket. Her eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling, her skin a pasty, unhealthy white. Her eyes were dark green, I could see, and a very pretty shade, too. I knew my eyes were blue -- we did have a single, tiny mirror -- and I thought absently that mine were too dark to be pretty. 

I bent over her, holding my hair back with one hand, and pressed my ear to her chest, listening to her heartbeat, which was wildly erractic. I peered into her eyes, much as Tashi had done the day before, and the pupils didn't do a thing when my head blocked the light. Her hand felt cool to the touch, as did the rest of her skin. 

"What have you tried?" I asked Tashi. 

"Everything we have," he replied nervously. 

I looked up at him sharply. "Everything?" I repeated, incredulous. 

"Yes, everything," he assured me, too worried to be annoyed with me. 

I stared at the girl a moment or two longer. She was my age, maybe a little older, but certainly no older than Tashi. And she was far prettier than me. Her hair was a bright green, several shades lighter than her eyes, and her skin would be pale, but healthily so, especially living underground as we were. I don't know why I cared so much about my appearance just then, with only the vaguest inkling that it had something to do with Tashi. 

"What happened to her thought sensors?" I aske then. "She did have some, ne?" 

"Of course," Tashi said, confusion written all over his face. "They're right over here..." He moved to where they lay on a nearby counter top, got them and brought them to me. 

I took them and mumbled a thanks, judging the best place to put them on her head. I pushed her hair away from her face, attaching one sensor and then the other in a fair approximation of where mine sat. 

For a moment, nothing happened. She continued to stare blankly at the ceiling, looking nothing more like one of the corpses Tashi and I had come across once before we rebelled, the only sign that she was alive the spasmodic jerking of her chest as she breathed. 

Then, she came alive all at once. She started shrieking and thrashing on her bed, to the point where both Tashi and I had to use our entire bodies to hold her in place while she calmed down. Neither of us had much body mass, so she almost fell off the bed twice before we found the best way to pin her down. 

"Nice going," Tashi breathed heavily once she stopped moving. 

"It worked, didn't it?" I hissed at him. 

"Oh, Mama," the girl wailed then and started to cry like her heart was breaking. 

* * *

Risa accepted the mug Tashi handed to her with a tiny, almost imperceptible smile. She was now dressed as an EVA pilot should, in the original suit we had found with the plug (I would have worn it, but I didn't have the figure for it; she did), the thought sensors on her head and her hair bound up in two identical buns on the top and on either side of her head. Two faded ribbons hung down from the buns, holding them in place. 

She had introduced herself as Risa once she had fully woken up from the shock, a scant hour ago. She had explained to us -- briefly -- that her mother had been killed years ago and she had watched it happen before several large men had carried her off in a white van and brought her to work in the tunnels to find NERV. 

I was angry; more at the men who had done this than at her or myself. I knew what it was like to be carried off to be put to hard labour, but I had never had a mother, so I couldn't relate to that part. Tashi's mother had never really liked me, and he had told me one night that he felt no paticular loss at his leaving her. That had enraged me too. At least you HAD a mother, I had thought darkly, as I did now. 

I apologized -- again -- for the huge mistake I had made in tearing her and the plug from the Unit.I felt terrible about it now, wishing I could go back in time and correct that mistake, but Risa assured me that she would be alright and that if I hadn't done it, she might have done the same to me. 

She told us how she had lost all hope of ever being free from the men who had held thousands of children for labour, until a man with dark hair and a small beard has approached her and asked her if she would be willing to help him out. It would mean getting out of the dark and dangerous tunnels for her, and she was glad for the chance. 

"That was, oh, I don't know how long ago that was," she said softly, staring down into her mug and it's contents. "Too long. It was ages before I could sit in the plug -- is that what it's called? -- and not have to worry about being the victim of such internal anguish..." Here she broke off, though I knew there was more to the story. 

"And then," Risa continued briskly, "Adam -- he's the one who asked me if I would volunteer -- approached me and told me of some renegades he had lost several months back, and that if I felt up to it, I was to track them down and bring them back, and report whatever it was they held. That's you two, right?" 

I nodded solemnly, the gesture repeated by Tashi. 

Risa sighed heavily, leaning backwards and closing her eyes. "I thought so," she whispered, more to herself than either of us. "Some of the other kids talked about how two lucky kids found NERV and had gotten away, and that Adam wouldn't dare touch them now. They wished most heartily that they could get away too, but none of them had the first inkling of where to go or how to find you. You are quite an inspiration model to them, you know. They go through each day, hoping to find where you'd gone through to NERV and join you here. And when they don't have any luck, they hope to have more the next day." She shrugged carefully. 

Tashi and I exchanged glances. More was known about us than we had first supposed. 

"Risa," Tashi began gently, "you are more than welcome to stay with us. Gladly, would we have your company." 

She looked up at him and smiled ever-so-charmingly. "Thank you, Tashi," she said softly, with no hint of deception, only true gratitude. "And you too, Mei," she added, flicking her glance in my direction. 

I only nodded my head absently in response. "Tashi, how bad did you say the entry plug was?" I asked, wanting to immerse myself in work. 

"Pretty bad," he replied, his manner curious about why I was suddenly so interested in working on something so tedious. 

"I should go see to it then," I said, rising from my seat and striding from the room. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	12. At the End of the World (11)

Risa shared a room with me; made sense, Tashi had said. After all, why clear out another room when there was plenty of room in mine? 

I didn't know how to react to this. I wasn't sure that I wanted Risa in my room, for various reasons. The first of which was that I had always had to share my sleeping space with something, and for the past few months, this room had been mine and mine alone. The second was that I still didn't know how I felt about Risa. 

She seemed nice enough, very quiet and not talking much, and when she did say something, it was always worth listening to. Now that she was walking around, she was a little bit taller than me, and I was again struck with the slenderness of her body and figure. A small part of my mind criticized me for being too short and nothing but skin and bones. 

"So what do you do?" I asked, sitting rigidly on my bed, my knees drawn up to my chest. 

Risa looked up at me, confused. "Hmm? Oh, nothing special. I just did whatever they told me to do." She gave a little laugh, sounding like the one bird I remembered from my childhood: happy and uncaring. "My mama..." Here she paused, her face clouding over with grief. "My mama was a doctor, and I wanted to be just like her." 

"Where did you live?" I asked, wondering briefly -- and too late -- if I was being rude. 

"In a city. South of here, I think." She smiled. "I was studying to be a doctor. It was hard. All the spots in schools were given mostly to boys. The odd girl who could make it in often dropped out because of what they did." Her eyes flashed angrily. "I wouldn't let them get to me -- " 

"How old are you?" I interupted. 

She stared at me for a moment. "Fourteen," she replied. 

"And you made it to school? Now aren't you lucky." I was being just a touch sarcastic, but then I got up from the bed and left the room without waiting for her to reply. 

* * *

That night, for the first time, I had The Dream. 

It was short, almost beyond recollection, but I remembered the face. I woke up suddenly, sitting up straight in my bed with the blankets clutched to my chest. My hair felt sticky with sweat, and a drop of it ran down my cheek to land on my hand. 

I stared at it in the semi-darkness caused by the one emergency light in the corner, weak as it was. That was when I remembered the face. It was huge; a sickly-coloured pink, oddly shaped, with a bulging eye socket. The socket bubbled in several different places and then a green eye rolled out of the folds between the bubbles, the triple-iris swinging around and focusing. And that was when I woke up. 

I shuddered, pulling the blankets evern closer. On the other side of the room, Risa was sleeping soundly, her mouth open slightly, probably in response to the moist air here. Her hair was loose; it was spread across her pillow and over her shoulders in soft waves. 

I turned away from her. I couldn't bring myself to lay back down and close my eyes. If I can see that face with so much clarity when my eyes are open, I reasoned, how much more clear will it be when it is ALL that fills my sight? 

* * *

The next day, I was exhausted. I had gone to sleep after the dream, but it was a fitful, restless sleep. I thought that maybe I would have felt more rested if I hadn't slept at all. So I sat there as Tashi brought out breakfast, staring into my mug full of water sightlessly. 

"Mei!" Tashi finally had to almost shout before I heard him. 

"Hmm?" I murmured, turning to him, startled. I got the impression that he'd already tried getting my attention several times. 

His face transformed in less than a second from annoyance to worry. "Are you alright?" he asked, his brow creasing. "You look like you haven't slept...It's not because of Risa, is it?" 

For a brief moment, I was tempted to say that it was. But I didn't; whether it was because I was just too tired to lie, or some deeper sense of morality, I couldn't say. I yawned and shook my head instead. "I just didn't sleep well last night, is all," I said, managing a weak smile. 

He didn't believe me; I could see it in his face and eyes. "Well, alright," he allowed. "But if you're having problems, come and see me. No matter what it is, okay?" His eyes urged me to believe him. 

I nodded, holding his gaze until I yawned hugely, nearly dropping my mug. 

"Good morning," Risa said quietly from the doorway. "I'm not interupting anything, am I?" 

Tashi and I both looked over at her. She was dressed in Unit-00's plug suit, just as I was dressed in Unit-01's. Her hair had been done up in the two buns again. 

Tashi smiled at her; I just yawned and turned back to my food. "No, not at all," he assured her. "Come, sit and have a bit to eat." 

With a timid smile, Risa sat down across from me. I tried not to stare at her, but I was too tired to really care. I thought again how the suit accented her slender figure...bolstering her where she needed to be held up and flattening out areas that needed to be...I dragged my eyes back to my mug. 

"So today," Tashi said towards the end of our tiny meal, "we should continue fixing the entry plug and then do sync tests. And if we have the time, try to fix the power supply or at least find out what's wrong." 

I yawned hugely at the end of his day's plan. "Sorry," I muttered as Tashi fixed me with an odd gaze. This is going to be a long day, I thought 

* * *

It was all I could do to stay awake during the fixing of Unit-00's entry plug. 

I didn't need to be in Unit-01 to help with the repairs of the plug, though I would be when we could get around to fixing Unit-00 itself. The people who stole it had almost destroyed it again; I got really mad that they would be so careless with such a lovely piece of equipment every time I looked at it, leaning against one wall in it's cage like the broken doll I'd had as a child, so I tried to keep my back to it whenever I could. 

Most of the damage to the plug was not the damage I inflicted. The only thing I had done, it seemed, was leave finger dents where I had picked it up, and even that was not directly my fault. The material was so weakened -- by what we couldn't tell, though Risa said they had submerged the plug in several different solutions to discover what it used as an oxygen suppliant; that made me even more mad -- that if I had tightened my fingers even the tiniest bit more, I just might well have shattered it. 

So now we worked inside the plug and out to strengthen it up. Tashi said it was a near miracle that Risa had been able to operate Unit-00 with it at all, it was that bad. 

Our entire day was dedicated to the plug. We had it ready to test the next day by the time we went to bed. I fell asleep easily and didn't dream. 

* * *

We got the power fixed first thing the next morning. More acurately, Tashi and Risa did. I slept late, something I had never done before. 

It felt so wierd, I thought, sitting in my bed and looking around in a confused, half-asleep state. The area was silent, the only sound a tiny dripdrip of water on the far side of the hallway. 

Water, I thought, trying to clear my mind of sleep-fog. I need a bath. 

I took one, still puzzling over the absence of sound. The water was cool against my skin, and I felt greatly refreshed after my bath. After I dressed in my plug suit, I pulled my wet hair up in a tail against the back of my head. Then I went to find Tashi and Risa. 

They found me. I was just entering C&C when they came down the hallway behind me. Tashi called my name as they both ran to meet me. Both wore excited grins. 

"We fixed the power," Tashi explained breathlessly. He must have been running for more than just down this hallway "And we also found something." 

"It's another entry plug," Risa burst out. "It's markings have been erased by time, but I think it used to be the plug for one of the white ones. The first number is almost guaranteed a '1'." 

I just stared at the two of them, wondering absently what kind of picture we made, standing in a triangle in plug suits. All of a sudden, I felt so useless. I had been sleeping while they had been hard at work. 

"That...that's great!" I exclaimed, trying to put on a cheerful front. "You didn't bring it back, did you?" 

Tashi shook his head. "It's half buried in rubble, and we couldn't have done it anyway. You know how big they are. We wanted to ask if you'd mind helping us get it out." 

"Of course not," I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral. 

"It's in a place where the Unit can't go," he continued, smiling gratefully at me. "So Risa and I were going to go in and attach a bunch of cables or ropes or whatever and then you can just pull it out. Sound good?" 

So that's how it is, I thought in despair, though I nodded and refused to let my inner feelings show. I'm just the muscle, rather than the brain. Later I thought that that theory was unreasonable; Tashi hadn't yet found an EVA that would accept him and Risa's was in such bad shape that I wouldn't have let her take it out if she'd wanted to. 

Tashi showed me where the plug was on a map and directed me to the nearest large space near it. He said that he and Risa would go around through NERV to get to it and that one of them would meet me there to make sure I didn't get lost. The space I was supposed to go was a place I hadn't been yet, so I thought that it was kinda nice of them to make sure, though at the time I was insulted that they would think I could get lost. 

They took off in one direction while I went to the Unit. With the power working now, it was very nice to sit in the plug, feel it twist into place, activate it and have the LCL fill the plug up. I wondered, as I tried to force my mind to accept the idea of breathing liquid, where so much LCL came from. Tashi and I had found a tank of it nearby, but it was hardly enough to keep the plug filled as many times as I used it, and now it would go doubly fast with Risa around. 

It was nice to walk down a hallway without wondering if I was going to have to blow the cable off and switch to internal power. I experienced again -- as I did everytime -- the feeling of power that came of sitting inside the Unit and controlling it's every move. 

Risa met me at the appointed spot. She waved and indicated that she wished to say something to me, so I turned on my speakers and told her to go ahead, adjusting the volume appropriately. 

"Tashi says that it might be a tight squeeze, but the cords only go to here," she said, pointing inside the hole in the wall. "So he asked me to tell you that you'll have to squeeze partly into here to get them out." She disappeared back into the hole, waving me to follow. 

I stared at the hole for a moment, wanting to just laugh. I would have to get my head and at least one shoulder in, and it looked as though I could only get an arm in, much less the shoulder or head. The shoulder had a huge blade on it, and my nose had a similar, thinner one. I shrugged and laid on my side, determined to do the best I could. 

I hated sticking my arm, palm up, into a hole when I couldn't see what I was doing. I had no idea if I was going to knock out a support pole or something. 

I lucked out. I was laying down for what seemed like forever. Then I heard Tashi shout, "Now, Mei!!" 

Bracing my free hand against a solid wall, I grabbed the cord that was looped around my fingers and yanked. The plug came free easily and I even swung a bit on my hip as I exerted too much force than the situation required. 

Amid the cloud of dust and grime, the plug was beat up. But the most important parts of it were salvageable. 

Tashi actually cheered. "Good job, Mei!!" he yelled, his voice echoing in the huge, empty room. The walls and ceiling shook, showering plaster and cement down on us. 

"Oops," he said, almost sheepishly. 

"Get into the plug," I ordered through the speakers, lying on my stomach and ejecting the plug. LCL poured out of the open door as they clambered up the Unit's side. They crawled into the plug; I shut the door as soon as I could and reactivated it. "Think like me, or don't think at all," I told them, getting to my feet. Grabbing the other plug and clutching it to my chest, I ran as fast as I could with two extra thought patterns disrupting the performance of the EVA. 

Once back in the EVA bay, I stopped, set the plug on the floor and locked the Unit into place. Before disengaging my own plug, I heard the Unit angrily say, _Get them out of me!_ Surprised at the vehemence of the Unit, I wasn't allowed to dwell on it long as Tashi broke the seal of the door. 

He stepped out first, gallantly offering his hand to first Risa and then me as we exited the pod. I ignored the gesture; I was still kinda mad at him, and I was perfectly capable of getting out on my own. 

"So now what do we do?" I asked, leaning over the safety railing of the walkway around the EVA, looking down at the plug lying on the floor far below. 

"Well, since the plug for Unit-00 is finished, we should either start the sync tests or see what we can do about fixing Unit-00 itself. I was thinking that pieces of one of the white Units would work," Tashi said casually. "Almost all of them are so badly damaged that I don't think they will be usable. Maybe we can salvage the outer casing." 

"Sounds like a plan," I replied, starting to the stairs that would take me down to the bay floor. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	13. At the End of the World (12)

The Dream came to me again. It's different this time, but I remembered more of it. _It started out in the EVA bay, only it looked much different. It was cleaner, the walls an off-white. Or at least, the part of the wall I actually noticed. _

In front of me is a head; a gigantic head. It is purple, the eye sockets dark, the eyes a bright yellow-white, the teeth huge. A long, thin, flat pole rises off the front of the nose. 

"What..What is that thing?" I demand, my voice rising. 

"It is called Evangelion Unit-01," the blonde woman to my left informs me in a professional tone. "It's man's last, best hope for survival." 

I can only stare at the giant head. "Is...is this my father's work?" I ask. 

"Correct," comes the cold voice above me. My head snaps up. In the window above the head is my father. He looks the same as the pictures in the magazines about him. "We're moving out," he says then. 

"What? But Unit-00's still in cryostasis!" the brunette on my right says. "No..You're going to use Unit-01?! But we have no pilot!" 

"One has just arrived," the blonde says calmly. 

"WHAT??" the brunette protests. "You can't be serious! He hasn't been trained! Even Ayanami Rei took seven months to synchronize with her EVA!" 

"We don't have a choice," the blonde replies. 

"Is that why you brought me here?!" I yell at my father, who stands absolutely still. "Is that why you wanted to see me?" 

"Correct," he answers. I bow my head. 

"I won't do it," I say. 

The brunette bends over so that she looks more or less into my face. "Shinji, we have no one else," she says. "You would be helping all of mankind." 

"I said I won't do it!" I yell. I clench my fists at my sides. 

"Shinji..." she says sadly, rising. 

Moments later, white robed people wheel a stretcher in from a side door. They stop and leave the stretcher in front of me. On it is a girl, my age, with blue hair. She is wrapped in bandages; a bag of plasma hangs from a pole attached to one corner of the bed. She stares at me for a moment before rising slowly into a sitting position. She obviously has to fight for each breath she takes. 

Just then an explosion rocks the building. The girl's stretcher rolls away from me, and she falls off. I fall to the walkway, landing hard on my rear end. 

"LOOK OUT!!" the brunette's voice calls out. 

I look up; several beams from the ceiling are falling towards me. I raise my arms futilely to protect my head. I hear a splash of the liquid surrounding the giant head. I hear the sound of one hard material striking another. 

For several moments I just sit there, waiting for the final blow I know isn't coming. When I realize it, I slowly lower my arms and look up. The Evangelion's hand -- that's what I assume it to be -- is above me. The beams from the ceiling have fallen away from me. It has protected me. 

Startled, I look around. I see the blue-haired girl lying on the walkway outside of the beams. The stretcher lies on it's side in front of her. 

I get up and run to her, pushing the stretcher aside. I drop to my knees beside her, lifting her up into my arms. She whimpers in pain; I can only stare at her. Lifting one hand from where it rests on her back, it is covered in blood. 

They were going to make her pilot it, I realize. In the condition she's in...I musn't run away, I musn't run away, **I musn't run away!!** I tell myself. 

"I'll do it!" I call to whoever's listening. "I'll pilot it." 

I woke up as suddenly as I did the first time. On the other side of the room, Risa stirred. "What is it?" she mumbled. She couldn't possibly be fully awake. 

"Nothing," I replied. "Just a bad dream." 

* * *

Tashi had us working on dismantling one of the white Units, the one with it's head smashed in. Risa and I were hanging down at about it's chest, supported by ropes and harnesses from the grated walkway above. It was Unit-09, as far as we could tell. The designation on the arm was mostly scratched out. 

I appreciated Risa more, since we started working together. She was studying to be a doctor when she had been taken, and she had been at the head of her class. She was actually working at a "high school" or even a "college" level, she said. The words meant nothing to me, but they seemed to impress Tashi. She had a vast knowledge of the kinds of illnesses and injuries we were likely to experience. She even took time one night to give us a full "examination". It felt much like what the doctors had done to me when they first took me away, so many years ago. 

"What do you think?" she asked me, crossing her arms over her chest as she swung from side to side on the ropes. 

I studied the chest plate. "I think it's mostly useable," I replied, also swinging on my ropes. "We can cut it off about...there, and go all the way over to maybe...there." I pointed at the spots we could use. "And down to about there." 

She nodded, dropping her arms to her sides. "Let's get to it then," she said, taking the flame-tool from her harness. "I'll take that side; you take that one." 

I nodded, taking my own tool out. Then I swung myself closer, grabbing onto the chest plate with the suction circles Tashi had found in a box somewhere. I pulled my goggles down, activated my tool and started cutting. 

It was strange; I was still wearing my thought sensors (sometimes Unit-01 wanted to talk, for no paticular reason) and I could have almost sworn that this Unit was crying out in pain. 

A whisper: _no, exultation._ I put the thought aside; I had to work now. 

We finished in about an hour; there was a lot that could be salvaged. The plate fell away to the floor; it clanged loudly. Risa and I raised our goggles and grinned at each other. Then we turned back. "Gross," I said, staring at the stuff beneath. It was a pinkish colour, but a really gross shade. It looked slimy and strangely alive. 

Risa was peering closer; "I'd like to study that," she said, more to herself than anything. 

"Well, not right now," I reminded her. "We have to clean that plate up." 

We loosened our ropes and slid down them to the ground, so far below. We stared at the mess on the inside of the plate for a long moment before plugging our noses from the smell. It was covered mostly in a red slime with darker red traces. And it smelt like the group latrines we'd had to share when we were still with the workforce. 

"This is disgusting..." I started, trying to keep my stomach still. 

"Well, it smells bad," Risa agreed. "I wouldn't say it's disgusting." 

I rolled my eyes. "Of course. You went to school. You were going to be a doctor," I said, almost sarcastically. "Anyway, where should we take this? It's kinda big for the Hole..." The Hole was where we got our water from. It came from a hole in the ground and was fairly clean. 

Risa regarded the plate thoughtfully for a long moment. Then she turned and cupped her hands around her mouth. "HEY TASHI!" she hollered across the bay. "WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH THIS?" 

He looked up from where he was working with Unit-00's entry plug and the one we had found the other day. He yelled back, "TAKE IT OUTSIDE TO THE LAKE!" 

I threw my hands up in the air as I turned and started towards the stairs that would take me to Unit-01. "Of course," I muttered to myself. 

We had found the lake about a month ago when I had been outside doing something or another. It wasn't very big, or very clean, but it was much larger than any body of water I had ever seen. Tashi said that old maps indicated that it had been much larger once, but so much time had passed since the maps had been made. That wasn't really the point though. The lake was a large body of water. 

Unit-01 activated, I strode across the two steps it would take to reach the plate, took the edges in my hands and heaved upward. It was heavy, even with the Unit's powerful grip. Then I moved to take it out to the lake. 

It was a long trip, especially with the chest plate of another EVA in my arms, held across my own chest. I made it all the way there by thinking about nothing in paticular, letting my thoughts wander. 

Unfortunately, that only brought back a recollection of the previous night's nightmare. A half-remembered fragment, almost insignificant but for the hideous face, seen through the screen I now looked through as though reflected in a mirror. 

_I open my mouth and scream before all passes into blackness._

Startled, I almost dropped the plate. Luckily, it didn't really go anywhere, and by then I had reached the lake. 

I took my time scrubbing the plate clean, wondering absently if the water would make the Unit or the plate rust up like so much of the metal we had found before. I didn't think it would, but I didn't know for sure. I'm not the expert on Units or entry plugs. I'm just a pilot. 

_...not just a pilot..._ came the almost unheard whisper. 

I stopped my scrubbing, wondering now if my ears were betraying me and my head hearing things that weren't there. "Is that you?" I asked the Unit's concious directly, but there was no answer. I shrugged and continued on with what I was doing. 

Back in the bay, Tashi was in the middle of a sync test on Risa. The plug was connected to a million different wires; he was in C&C at the last working computer. I made a mental note to myself to take some time out and try to get the computers back up. I didn't really realize how much we depended on them. 

I practically tiptoed back into the bay, not wanting to disturb the test. I set the clean plate down by Unit-00 and creeped back to my cage, where I locked the Unit into place and ejected the plug. Then I joined Tashi in C&C. The test was progressing quite well, by the look of things. Her ratios were quite high. I was impressed. 

After a time, he stopped the test, took a few moments to let Risa readjust to the normal pattern of her thoughts, and then turned to me, smiling charmingly. "Your turn," he said. 

I barely registered what he said. Where did he get that smile from? I asked myself. He was just full of surprises. Instead of commenting on anything, I just nodded and headed down into the bay. 

Risa helped me get my entry plug out of loading position (that's where the end was still inside the EVA so that all I had to do was climb in and activate) and hooked up to the wires as Tashi recalibrated the computer program for me. 

The test went smoothly, uneventful, as usual. The only thing different was the stress levels Tashi was using; it was really no huge feat to balance them out with a change in my thought forms. 

I knew the test was over when there was a sudden absence of all stress. I waited for a minute or two to reorder my thought patterns, before trying to get out of the plug. 

It wouldn't work. The crossbar over my lap refused to budge. 

"What the...?" I said to myself, staring down at the crossbar in puzzlement. 

_Not just a pilot,_ came the thought again, stronger this time. And different. The mental voice had a different quality to it, not that of the Unit-01 voice I was so used to hearing. 

I would have responded, but I was dumbstruck. The voice and even all sense of the presence disappated rather quickly. Still confused, I pushed at the crossbar again; it refused to move. 

"What's going on?" I whispered, more to myself than anything. Almost desperately, I pushed at the bar again; this time, it moved, and I was able to get out of the plug. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	14. At the End of the World (13)

Kyle joined us days before I turned 15. Tashi had said that records stated that only 14-year-olds could pilot the EVA's, but there was no real record of anyone having their 15th birthday and continuing to pilot. The records ended rather abruptly, even. There was a mention of one 15-year-old being a pilot, but his Unit disappeared before it could even be used. Tashi didn't see any real harm in letting me continuing to pilot Unit-01. After all, it did respond to me better than it did to Risa. 

I found Kyle when I was above ground one day, carrying a long length of wiring for our newly-rebuilt computers. I needed to hook them up to a power station on the surface. Risa offered to help, but Unit-00 wasn't quite ready yet. It was fully rebuilt, but a lot of the systems were faulty; or at least, that's what Tashi said. It reacted violently to Risa, but that may have been because she had been out of it for so long. It reacted even worse to me. I had been left with the biggest migraine I'd ever had and was useless for almost a week because I couldn't move of the pain. 

He was huddled in a corner of the power station, trying to stay warm in front of a tiny, feeble and all but useless fire. It was raining, as it always seemed to be, and he was in the driest corner of the station, but he would have died if I hadn't found him. Even after I'd brought him back, Risa had to fight for days to keep him alive. She said he had pneumonia and hypothermia and a few other things I can't remember. But he was in "critical condition" and needed to be "isolated" for several days, until she was sure that he would be fine. 

My birthday this year came and went just like last year: uneventful. Tashi wished me Happy Birthday and gave me a small chain to wear around my neck. It wasn't anything special. Risa wished me a Happy Birthday as well, but she was exhausted from having to fight with Kyle's "vital signs" again for the third or fourth time that day. 

He did get better. It's not like his name was pinned to his shabby clothes in plain sight, even if I had been able to read. He recovered from the worst of his illnesses in no time, really, but spent several more weeks getting his strength back. 

All three of us spent an hour or two each day with him, getting to know him and letting him get used to us. Risa and I felt paticularily protective about him; I had saved him from death on the surface, and she had saved him from death down here. Tashi seemed indifferent. Before long, he was walking around; slowly and with help, but he was getting better. 

My dreams took a different twist soon after that. I made my way through each day, dreading falling asleep because of the dreams from Ikari Shinji's point of view, especially when each dream became longer and I could relive several days in night. But as usual, I was so tired that I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. 

The dreams changed. 

_"Midori!" Lina exclaims, sitting down sideways in the seat in front of mine. "You cut your hair!!" _

"Do you like it?" I ask, tossing my shortened hair back from my face. 

"It looks great!!" Jun says, sitting on a corner of the desk where Lina sits. Lina leans forward, feeling my hair in her fingers. 

"It feels so nice! What did you use on it?" she asks, sitting back down. 

"My aunt was in town last night," I explain. "She didn't want to stay long cause of the robot incident, but she cut my hair for me and then she put egg in it." 

"Egg??" they ask, slightly off from one another. I nod, my eyes travelling in the direction of the door, seeing movement. It is the transfer student. 

"I'm going to use egg on my hair," Jun declares. "How do you do it?" 

"Scramble an egg, rub it in nice and good and rinse after ten minutes with cold water. Simple," I tell them, spreading my hands in conclusion. "Don't use hot water, or you'll have scrambled egg in your hair!!" We start laughing. 

"Oh, did you hear the rumor yet?" Lina asks, excited. She leans closer to me, grabbing Jun's arm to bring her in too. "Ayako told me just this morning -- the transfer student is the pilot of that robot!" 

I woke up suddenly, as I always did these nights. My mind still played the dream; whoever "Midori" was, she was not me, but that wasn't anything new. Shinji wasn't me, either, and neither was the EVA. 

I shivered, and it had nothing to do with being cold. Jun and Lina were still etched in my mind, clear as day, and the feel of the desk...the sights of the school...the people in the class...were all still so real to me. I sighed and lay back down, pulling the thin blanket up to my chin and curling up underneath it, my knees drawn high against my body. After a while, I fell back asleep. Unlike before, the dream continued. 

_"Do it!" Jun says, pushing me gently in the direction of the transfer student. _

"Why should I do it?" I ask, resisting her. "Why can't you or Lina do it?" 

"Because, Midori," Lina says anxiously, pushing me along with Jun, "we're too shy to do it. You've always been bolder than us put together." 

That is a lie; for the first time I doubt our friendship. I turn to face them; they look truly scared. I sigh resignedly. "All right, I'll do it. But only if you two come with me." 

They nod, looking relieved. I turn again and walk down the aisle to the transfer kid's desk, Jun and Lina clinging to my sleeves. 

"Hi," I said as I sat on his desk. He looks up at me, startled. Then he reaches up and pulls the headphones out of his ears. 

"Uh...hi," he replies, dropping his gaze again. 

"I'm Midori," I say, sticking my hand out. "These are my friends Jun and Lina." They smile nervously and wave. 

"Ikari Shinji," he replies softly, taking my hand in his. He raises his eyes again. 

I am surprised, but not overly so. His eyes are blue. It is no big thing, I suppose, for more and more kids to be born with lighter coloured eyes; my own are green. To my knowledge, only he and Kensuke have blue eyes in the class. Mine and Yui's are green. Ayanami's are red. 

"Well, Shinji-kun, it was nice meeting you, see you later!!" I hop off his desk and breeze back down the aisle to my own. 

"Midori!!" Jun and Lina whine. "Why did you just leave like that?" 

"I don't know," I reply, shaking my hands in front of me. My heart is fluttering in my chest. Just then, the class rep calls everyone to attention as the sensei enters the room. 

* * *

"So what is it that you guys do around here?" Kyle asked, leaning back in his chair. The only thing he still wore from his illness was the bandage around his arm where he had been cut very badly. 

I yawned hugely before anyone could reply. My dreams took so much out of me every night that the hardest time for me was waking up and getting through breakfast. "Sorry," I said when they all turned to look at me. 

"We're not really sure," Risa replied. She sounded and looked tired, too. "So far all we've done is repair things." 

"I go outside every now and then," I supplied, yawning and then apologizing again. "You were lucky that day." 

He bent his head to his chest and smiled. "Yes, I was," he agreed softly. 

"How old are you, anyway?" Tashi asked. He was more awake than me and Risa put together, but I kind of expected that of him. He was always a morning person. 

"Last time I checked...um, 16 years old, I think," Kyle answered thoughtfully. "It's hard to keep track of days when you're on your own. After awhile, you just kind of forget." 

"Well, maybe you can help us get the computers back," Tashi continued, almost regretfully, but I doubted he was being truly serious about it. "You're too old to pilot." 

"Pilot?" Kyle asked, an utterly blank expression on his face. 

"An EVA," Risa told him, giving Tashi an odd look which I'm sure he noticed and pretended not to. "The computers all say that only 14-year-olds can pilot them, but Mei is still doing fine. Unit-01 still responds to her." 

He looked so confused that I sighed and stood up. "Come with me," I said, heading towards the door leading to the bay. "It'll make more sense if you see them." 

"Don't forget about today's sync test!" Risa called after me. 

I walked down the hallway in an almost half-awake state. I was aware of everything around me, but it was hard to focus on it. I heard Kyle following behind me. His shoe soles were harder than ours. 

"Where are we going?" he asked at one point as I started up the flight of stairs to the walkway around the Units' heads. 

"We're almost there," was all I said. 

He reacted much like I did when I first saw Unit-01 up close and personal. The eyes made an impressive sight on their own, glaring yellow in the dark sockets, the teeth gleaming in the dim light. 

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING???" he demanded, clutching the railing behind him tightly. His eyes were wide, and he looked like he was having trouble breathing. 

"Unit-01," I informed him, as though everyone in the world knew that. "It's not so bad," I continued, much nicer. "I was piloting this thing when I rescued you, only you were too sick to remember it." I spoke of Unit-01 affectionately, as though it were my right arm or something else I needed. I was struck with the idea that I did need Unit-01. I honestly couldn't think of what I would do without it right now. 

Tashi and Risa joined us at that point. Risa looked hard-pressed not to laugh. "Come on, Mei," she said, waving me towards her. "We're doing in-Unit tests today." 

I followed her around in behind Unit-01's head and got into the plug. As I settled myself in the seat, taking a moment to yawn, Risa leaned into the plug and started laughing. 

"He was hilarious!" she exclaimed. "Does everyone react to Unit-01 like that?" 

I shrugged. "I dunno. Not many people have seen it." I turned in my seat and grinned at her. "Quite a few of those who have almost shit their pants though." We both had a good laugh, and then Risa got out of the plug, closing the door behind her.

I sighed as the plug activated and twisted inside the Unit. I waited as LCL filled the plug and inhaled it when I was supposed to. I closed my eyes as the view changed, the viewscreens running through every colour I could dream of and several I couldn't. When I opened them again, I was seeing the bay and everything around me, including Kyle, who was still on the walkway and still clutching the railing tightly Risa and Tashi were nearby. I laughed to myself, and then shifted in the cage. Kyle actually screamed when I moved the Unit. 

That only made me laugh harder and as I leaned over the crossbar because I was laughing so hard, the Unit shifted forward a bit more, stopped by the restraining bar over the chest. I had the unimanginable pleasure of seeing him pass out. It always amused me to no end when someone passes out, just because I move. 

"Let's get going!" Tashi shouted over Risa's gales of laughter. "Mei, are you ready to go?" 

I flipped the speakers on. "You bet," I replied, trying to hide the fact that I was laughing and failing miserably. I turned them off as soon as I could, but Tashi could tell and rolled his eyes, turning around and walking back towards C&C. "Come ON, Risa," he said over his shoulder, "and bring him with you." 

I had time to organize my thoughts for piloting while they got back to C&C. The Unit was strangely quiet. 

"Begin test," Tashi said in my ear suddenly and plunged the Unit into the test. 

It was like a smack to the head with a nice wide beam from the ceiling. I almost passed out myself, but I managed to stay concious, though I felt dazed afterwards. Then I had to concentrate on the test. 

It seemed to take forever, and it seemed to take a moment at the same time. The reactions of my mind and body in the LCL were different than an empty plug. All I was really aware of was the changing pressure of the plug during the test. 

Once it was over, I came out of my trance-like state, aware of a building pressure in the back of my mind. "Deactivate," I said tiredly. Nothing happened. 

"Deactivate," I tried again, hitting a button on my control panel. The viewscreens disengaged, but otherwise, nothing else happened. 

_I'll show you what I am capable of!_ That was the Unit, and it sounded mad. 

"What?" I exclaimed, wondering what brought this outburst on. I stopped talking as another memory flashed into my mind, so real that all I could do was sit there in the seat and stare. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	15. At the End of the World (14)

_My systems shut down. "What on earth..?" I start. A red light flashes in front of me and to the sides on my viewscreen. 'Activating Dummy Plug System' they say. _

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" I scream. "I WANT CONTROL!!!" 

"You are not doing your job," my father says, calmly, coldly. 

"But there's a person in there!" I try to argue. "I can't kill someone in cold blood!" 

"It is an Angel, and it must be destroyed," he tells me, and that is the end of the argument.

My viewscreens activate again, only this time I am an observer. I can only watch helplessly as Unit-01 reactes to the dummy plug. I am surprised at the intensity of it's attack, as well as sickened. The Unit is ferocious, attacking the Angel Unit-03 in a way that I could never bring myself to do. I try the controls anyway, hoping that it will respond to me in some way and stop. 

"Stop it! Stop! Stop!" I repeat over and over again. "Stop! Stop it!" 

Unit-01 rips Unit-03's arms off. A liquid much like blood sprays out, coating all the buildings nearby with it. 

"Stopstopstopstop!!" I am almost desperate now, shoving at the crossbar that holds me in place. "Stopstopstopstopstop!!!" 

The entry plug in Unit-01's hand. "DON'T!!!" The fingers close. 

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Only then does the Unit stop. After it has taken someone's life. 

I only sit there in shock as recovery crews try to get inside the entry plug of Unit-03, to try and recover the pilot.

"Shinji-kun..." Misato's voice enters softly into my ears. 

"Who's the pilot?" I ask softly. 

"I'm sorry, Shinji..," she says. "The pilot is...the pilot is..." 

She doesn't need to finish the sentence. I can see for myself who the pilot is. His body is limp between the two mens' arms, his head dropped down to his chest. 

Touji. My best friend. 

I scream. 

I came to myself again, feeling as though someone had just hit me in the stomach with a board. "Why?" I whispered. "Why kill someone..." I actually had tears slipping out from the corners of my eyes. 

_Because it was necessary._

That was the last thought of the Unit as the entry plug ejected and drained of LCL. 

I was pretty useless for the rest of the day. The primal quality of the memory was stuck in my mind. All I could really see was the Unit's hand, crushing the entry plug of Unit-03 beneath it's fingers, over and over again. Tashi eventually gave up on trying to get me to do anything useful and productive, and Kyle just refused to talk to me, probably because of what had happened with Unit-01. 

The highlight of the day was that Risa and Unit-00 finally synchronized. We had been working for months to get Unit-00 fixed and then it reacted violently, but now it would accept her. We had a long moment of triumph that didn't fade until after we had gone to bed. 

I dreamed of Jun and Lina again. I was actually relieved that the Unit's memory fragment didn't enter my dream, but I wasn't sure how much more mild this dream was. 

* * *

Tashi had me and Risa testing together now. He and Kyle had somehow managed to fix the system up to handle up to three testees at once to do comparitive charts. This was the second time we had done it this way, and it seemed to work. 

During the middle of the test, the Unit assaulted me again, without any warning. It wasn't as much a memory this time. It was more like a simulation like the ones Tashi has shown us on the computer, where you see things as though they were really happening, but they weren't. 

_Dummy Plug System Activated the screens say. _

"What? No, they can't be!" I cry, swinging the controls around. The Unit doesn't respond. I feel the shift in it as the dummy plug comes into full activation, and it registers as unconcious. The Angel on the viewscreen starts extending it's arms, preparing to attack. 

Unit-01 becomes the attacker, leaping at the Angel and beating up on it. The Angel falters under the onslought. 

"No....stop..." I whisper as I watch the Angel be all but ripped apart by an out-of-control Evangelion. I swing the contols again. No response. 

"Stop...stop....stop!!" I start to struggle to get out of the plug's seat but it holds me fast and I can hardly move. With my hands, I shove the controls violently from side to side, using my whole body as leverage. One of them breaks off in my hand, bits of the metal and wiring flying off into the LCL and suspending there for a moment before drifting down. 

The Unit still doesn't respond to me and continues to destroy the Angel. 

The other control breaks off in my hand. I stare at them in shock for a moment before shaking them loose off my hands and pushing at the crossbar. "Stop! Stop! Stop!" I feel so trapped. Outside, the Unit is using a part of the Angel's body to crack the red globe set in it's chest. Inside the globe I can see the curled form of another human being. The globe's surface cracks. 

"STOP!!!_" I scream. With all the strength in my body, the crossbar gives way and breaks off into the LCL._ The vision fades away. 

"MEI!!!" Tashi's voice interupts into my ears, a strange sound after the silence induced by the Unit. I gasp as I see the hand controls and the crossbar floating in the LCL in front of me. I can't say anything, do anything, until everything hits me at once. 

"LET ME OUT!!!" I shrieked, getting out of the seat and pushing at the door of the plug. "I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!" 

I fell back into the seat as the plug was deactivated from the outside and twisted out. The controls and crossbar sank to the bottom as the LCL was drained out. I got back up as soon as it stopped moving and started pushing at the door again. It opened and I all but leaped out. 

Tashi was on the other side, along with a dripping Risa. I fell out of the plug, hitting the walkway on my side and heard as well as felt my arm pop in its socket. Before they could do anything, I struggled to my feet and ran away from Unit-01. 

I stopped running when I could hardly breathe from exertion. I didn't know where I had run to, but I once I took the time to look, I recognized it as the bottom level of NERV we had taken the time to look at. None of us had gone further. I sank down to the dusty floor, closing my eyes and resting my head against the wall behind me to catch my breath. Once I did, I struggled to my feet and wandered back. 

I wasn't really eager to go back. Unit-01 was more a nightmare now than the haven it used to be. Tashi was sure to yell at me for damaging the plug so badly. I honestly didn't think I was strong enough to break the controls and crossbar off... Risa would want to do a full examination and ask me a barage of questions to determine if I was alright or not. Kyle...well, I didn't know about Kyle. Maybe he would laugh at me for running away. 

I didn't know how long I had been gone, but I wasn't ready to face them yet, so I went to my room, changed for bed and went to sleep. For the first time in months, I slept without dreaming. 

* * *

Tashi didn't yell at me, which I was surprised at. He only calmly asked what I had been thinking when I had damaged the plug. My eyes to the floor, I told him that I hadn't really been thinking about anything. He raised an eyebrow at me and was silent for the longest time. I felt my tentative control break. I started crying. 

Luckily, he had sent the other two out, telling them to start scrounging supplies for rebuilding my entry plug, which could take awhile. Now, as I brought my hands to my face and covered it with them, he got up from his chair and put his hands on my shoulders. 

"I'm not blaming you, Mei," he said softly. "All I want to know is what possesed you to destroy the only plug for Unit-01 we can find." He hesitated a moment longer and then awkwardly pulled me into his arms. 

It was a long time before I could reply. When I did, it was barely audible. "The Unit...it's showing me things I don't want to see." 

"What?" He sounded like he almost didn't believe me. 

I nodded against his chest. "It has a concious mind, but it's been quiet for a long time now. I think it's been sending me the dreams I've been having for months, and the other day it showed me what happened when the previous pilot didn't live up to what was expected of him. Yesterday...it just took over. I thought it was really happening..." I took a deep breath to supress the lump that rose in my throat, which prevented me from speaking for a few more moments. Tashi was silent until I continued. 

"It was an Angel...whatever an Angel is...and Unit-01 just took over all controls. It wouldn't respond to me at all. It was trying to kill it...and there was a human inside...and it killed the Angel...with no thought or regret...it just wouldn't respond!" I burst into tears again. Tashi continued to hold me and gently stroked my hair. 

"It's alright," he said. "You'll be okay. Do you think you'll pilot Unit-01 again once we rebuild the entry plug?" 

So much to ask right now... "I'll try," I said, doubtfully. "I won't know until it's rebuilt." 

He smiled; I could feel it. "That's all I can ask," he said. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	16. At the End of the World (15)

_This chapter contains mature content. Reader discretion advised._

Lucky for us, I guess, that the entry plug was rebuilt in less than a month.The most difficult part to rebuild and attach was the crossbar. Part of it had been left on the plug's seat, and trying to get the new half to match was a very hard task. It taxed the patience of us all, but we somehow managed to hang on until it was done. The power test finally had a green light. We cheered. 

Now I had to face my fears. I hadn't had a bad dream since the plug had been ruined, except from the normal dreams most people had, the ones that made next to no sense. Now, I put the plug suit on with the realization that I would be getting back into the plug, and testing it out. I stared at myself in our mirror for a long time. 

"You can do it," I whispered to myself. "I know you can." 

***** 

The LCL flowed up around my ears and over my head. I breathed in, feeling the liquid fill my lungs. It felt good; I hadn't realized how much I had missed that, although I knew I didn't miss getting it out of my body afterwards. 

The viewscreen changed colours and then focused; everything was much larger, as I had come to expect. 

"Here we go again," I said to myself, leaning back in my seat. 

The test began. Tashi wanted to see how long I could stay in the plug without having to come out. He said something like it'll give him an idea how long I can stay in the plug before they can rescue me safely. I chose to block out the implications of that. He said that he would make Risa take the same test soon as well. 

So all I could do was sit there with my thoughts and stare at things around me. After awhile I fell asleep. I woke up once or twice. The dreams came back. I was Midori again, and this time in a situation I KNEW never happened. I could actually feel the Unit taking over my mind this time, even though I was mostly asleep. 

_"Shinji-kun...," I whisper, staring up at him._

I stirred. 

_"Shhh..." he breathes, his eyes dark. He barely moves,_

"No..." I muttered. "These...." 

_"I love you Midori." He bends his head and presses his lips to mine._

"Aren't....mine...." 

_I return the kiss, moving my arms around his back to pull him closer._

"Not...mine..." 

_One of his hands travels into my hair, raking it back gently, while the other travels down my side, pulling my shirt out of my school skirt._

"Not mine!!" 

_The feel of his skin sliding over mine, our bodies locked in a passionate embrace._

"STOP IT!!!!" 

The Unit released it's hold on me. I woke up, shaking and struggling against the crossbar of the plug. "THOSE WERN'T MY MEMORIES!!!" I screamed, almost incoherent. "WHY WERE YOU FORCING THEM ON ME?! THEY AREN'T MINE!!!!!!" 

_I wanted to know you._

The voice was so different, I stopped dead. "What?" I asked. It was so hard to breathe. It was difficult to supress the panic I was starting to feel. I could barely see, barely breathe... 

_I wanted to know you,_ it repeated. 

"Who...who are you?" I whispered, holding myself absolutely still. My stomach clenched violently with terror. The LCL, normally a clear yellow-tinted liquid, was murky and clouded. 

_My name is...I don't remember my name. But I used to be human...once..._

More images of the dark haired boy from the false memories flashed quickly through my head. 

"You're..." My voice was barely audible. "Let me out! I want out! Please," I begged. 

_I only wanted to know you. I'm sorry if I made you unhappy. I promise there'll be no more dreams._

"You're...you're Shinji..." The plug went dark again. 

* * *

I woke this time to Tashi's face right over me, and Risa's just beyond his. "Mei, Mei, oh thank everything, you're alright," he was babbling. He pulled me up tight against his chest, burying his face in my hair. 

LCL still ran down my forehead, temple, cheeks and neck from my hair, some of which was plastered to my skin. It itched. My vision was fuzzy at the edges. I blinked slowly, trying to make sense of the dizzying height of the Eva above me, it's head bent as if to watch me. 

_I wanted to know you._

"What...what happened?" I asked, my voice cracking. I closed my eyes to stop my head from spinning. 

"It was the Eva," Risa replied, placing her hand in mine. "It wouldn't let go of the plug. We were doing another test -- do you remember that?" 

_A flash of the entry plug, open and waiting; Tashi's face and voice as the door closed. "It'll be over soon."_

"Yes," I whispered. 

"The Eva...it accepted the plug, but then it wouldn't let go. We tried everything...even prying it open. You've been in there for almost 16 hours...it wasn't supposed to go that long. It only just let you go. The plug came out all on it's own." 

I opened my eyes to stare up at the Unit again. It was more in focus. "Shinji...," I whispered, wondering if I actually said anything at all. Then I closed my eyes and passed out. 

When I came to, I was lying on one of the long pallets Risa used in her medical area. Kyle was sitting next to me, a bored expression on his face. "Oh, you're awake," he said. He got up and walked to the door, leaning out of it and hollering down it that I was awake. 

I tried to ignore him. There was something in his manner today that I didn't like, but couldn't pinpoint. It became easy to ignore him once I turned my mind back to the experience in the plug. 

I guessed then that the dreams were a result of the turmoil inside the EVA. I still remember the Unit telling me that I was lot like it's son, Shinji. I can't understand why the Unit would switch it's concious like that, and I suppose I never will. The memories of what he was supposed to look like flashed quickly through my mind. He reminded me of Tashi. Dark of hair and eye with a brooding, almost pensive expression on his face...I shook my head clear of those images and focused my mind on something else. Like how long I had been in the plug. 

Sixteen hours, Risa had said. That was a long time. She also said that it wasn't supposed to have gone that long. So just how long was I supposed to be in there? 

Risa and Tashi came in then and took up chairs by my bed. "How do you feel?" Risa asked right away. 

I smiled weakly. Just like a doctor..."Better, I suppose," I replied softly. "Better than I did in the plug, at least." 

She nodded professionally. Then she dropped the medical front and hugged me."Don't ever scare us like that again," she whispered in my ear. She sounded like she was trying not to cry. 

I managed to get one arm up off the bed to drape it over her back and hug her back. "I won't," I promised. 

She sat up, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. It was Tashi's turn to hug me. He didn't say anything for a long time. When he did, his voice was so rough with suppressed emotions that I couldn't be sure of what he said. It sounded like, "I thought I'd lost you." 

"What happened?" I asked, the events I could remember being all mixed up in my mind. 

Risa and Tashi looked at each other for a moment. "It's kind of a long story..." Tashi started. 

"And I, as your doctor, am forbidding the complete hearing of it until after you eat," Risa said firmly. "You need to wake up a bit more; you've been asleep for a whole day. 

A whole day?! That's a long time! My mind shied away from the possibilities of what I could have done in that time. "So what have you been doing in that time?" I asked then. 

Tashi shrugged. "A lot of repairs again," he avoided the question. "Unit-00 had a fit earlier today." 

My head swung around to Risa right away, my eyes focusing on her as quickly as I could get them too. She was showing the signs she had displayed earlier when Unit-00 had fits with her in them. A certain tension and weariness in her stance and face, the way her eyes darted about nervously...I felt sad that the Unit would subject her to that after they had finally synchronized. 

"Any idea why?" I inquired, still watching Risa, though I already knew the answer. None of us had any idea why Unit-00 had fits. 

"Mei, does Unit-01 talk to you?" Risa interupted. 

I was a bit surprised. "Sure he does," I replied, almost without thinking about it. 

She smiled. "I knew it! Unit-00 talked to me today. It's the first time it's ever done that...Wait a minute! He?" 

It was my turn to smile. "It's kind of a long story," I explained. "I, as your patient, forbid the retelling of it until I hear everything else I missed while I was asleep." 

She laughed outright at her own words thrown back at her. "All right, I'll wait and suffer until you finally get around to telling me." 

I stuck my tongue out at her. 

Some time later, both of us had said our pieces. I had woken up just in time for dinner, apparently, and they were quite ready to stay up for a while longer with me and keep me entertained. 

It turned out that the test had run hours over the time Tashi had slotted for it. He, Risa and Kyle had all been keeping an eye on the monitors to make sure that I was alright. They had taken turns to keep themselves awake after staring at a screen for hours on end. They had tried everything to get the Unit to release the plug when my life signs started wavering and eventually dropping, rather rapidly. Nothing had worked. Then it had just released it all on its own. 

That led into my story. I told them how Unit-01 had talked to me almost since the first day we had "met" and how it was the mother of the previous pilot, Ikari Shinji. Then I told them about the dreams and detailed a couple in, glazing over most and not mentioning a lot of them at all. It all ended with Shinji being the Unit's concious rather than his mother's. And then I had been asleep since then, so I didn't know anything else. 

"That's the wierd thing," Tashi said when I had finished. "We weren't anywhere near Unit-00 when it had a fit. It activated all by itself and started pounding the walls. It didn't last long of course, and only it's knuckles were scratched a bit. But Risa just dropped to the floor, clutching her head and clawing at the thought sensors." I had noticed a long time ago that only me and Risa wore thought sensors almost all the time. Tashi had stopped wearing his when he found out that he would never be a pilot. I remembered something then. 

"Has that white Unit we cut the chest plate off for Unit-00 done anything?" I asked suddenly. They looked surprised. 

"No..." Tashi said slowly. "What's that got to do with anything?" 

I thought over what I wanted to say so it wouldn't come out in a big mess. "When I was cutting the plate, I thought it was making some kind of thought noise that was pain, but it said 'exultation'. I don't know...maybe I'm going crazy that the Units can talk to us if they want to, as long as we're wearing the thought sensors." 

"No, it's a good theory," Tashi said thoughtfully, tapping his chin with a forefinger and staring off at nothing. 

"It said that it didn't like Unit-01," Risa confided, leaning close to me. "It said that it wanted to get away as fast as it could."

It was my turn to be thoughtful. "I think there was a record on the computer before that file got lost that Unit-00 reacted badly to Shinji," I told her slowly, my brow wrinkiling with the effort of thinking back so far to files long beyond our reach. "I bet if we were to switch for a day and take compatiability tests, I'd do horrible in Unit-00. It didn't like me the first time. I'm sure that Unit-01 would have no problem with you." 

Not long after that, I felt tired again and had to go to bed. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	17. At the End of the World (16)

_This chapter contains extremely mature and violent content. Reader discretion advised.   
Rated NC-17_

_What are you doing?_ Unit-01 asked curiously. 

I turned the welding tool off and shoved the face guard up onto my head, sighing in exasperation as I wiped sweat off my forehead. "At the moment, nothing!" I told it acidly. I was glad that I was the only one working in the EVA bay right now. "I can't do anything when you're talking to me, because I can't risk having you in my head when I'm attempting to work with such a dangerous tool!" I shook the welder almost angrily. "So just be quiet and let me fix you up, alright?" 

No reponse. I sighed again, slammed the face guard down and got back to work. 

Unit-01 and I had had a bit of an accident, only one in a long series of accidents. It wasn't major compared to the plug incident, but it was serious enough to warrant me having to get up super early and do what I could to fix it. 

We had been above ground again, looking for supplies, and I had gone by the lake. I was not prepared at all to have found a few archaic pieces of artillery waiting for me. They looked like big boxes attempted to be cut into a rounder, ovular shape and rolled about on nice long treads that were in their death throes of productive use. Huge guns were attached to the fronts. They had fired on me. None of the shells did damage when they hit, but they did disrupt my thought patterens or the relays in the Unit to them enough that I tripped and stumbled into several buildings and the remainder of a rather formidable wall. Unit-01's shins had been scraped fairly badly and I needed to replace a toe plate. I was doing the toe plate now, provided that the Unit could keep from talking to me long enough for me to get anything productive done. 

As it was, I didn't really want Tashi, Risa or Kyle finding out that I'd fallen like that. Tashi was likely to give me a Look that said, "You should be more careful." Risa would check to see if I was alright, and truthfully, my back did kind of hurt. I must have twisted when I fell. Kyle would laugh. 

I finished the toe plate as the lights in C&C came on; I packed up the tools and put them back in their closet. By the time I had gotten that done, Tashi had come down to the floor level and was waiting for me. 

"What are you doing up so early?" he asked, yawning. 

I grinned at him. "Minor repairs," I replied. "The air above is positively acidic." 

He only stared at me, the expression on his face unreadable. Then he reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder. "Looks good," he approved, which was followed quickly by a yawn. "It's too damn early," he complained. 

"Then what are you doing up?" I asked. 

"Couldn't sleep. Besides, we have those joint tests today." Today was a special kind of test. Tashi wanted to see the plug suits really affected our performance in the Units or not. "Come help me set up before the other two get up." He turned and started across the bay again. I followed. 

We worked in silence for a long time. It was nice, just the two of us, working together just like we used to before Risa had joined us. There was this sense of infinite friendship between us at this moment as we worked; the knowledge that we would always have this special affinity for each other, and that nothing could really destroy it. 

Kyle was up next; he was always a zombie in the morning, so he didn't even try talking to us right away. Risa followed soon after, and she was all ready to help with the final preperations. 

Finally, the test was set up and we took the time out then to have some breakfast and relax before starting. Kyle was more sociable, and while Tashi and Risa discussed something about the Units, he started talking to me. 

It wasn't as though we hadn't talked before. It was that we hadn't as much of an opportunity to talk since he had gotten better. 

"So what's the plan?" he asked. His eyes held mine. 

"We're going to see if plug suits really affect our performance in the EVA's," I said, managing to get my gaze back to what I was eating, so I missed the gleam that stole into his eyes. He hid it very well; I only caught a glimpse of that look when I turned back to him. I wondered if I had even seen it at all. 

He laid his hand on my arm; it lingered there as he spoke, leaning closer to me. "I'm sure you'll do fine," he whispered, an odd grin stretched across his face. 

The test took place later that morning. Risa and I had to strip down completely in the curtained off area Tashi and I had prepared, and then relax ourselves as completely as we could before getting into the entry plugs. 

_I remember this,_ the Unit -- Shinji -- said. 

_That's fantastic,_ I shot back at him, not really knowing if I was annoyed at him or just plain annoyed. 

It was an uneventful test, at least for Risa and I. All we had to do was sit there like any other test. Tashi sounded completely neutral when he said we could get out, so I couldn't even speculate as to how the results turned out. 

Risa and I had to take a bath afterwards. The LCL felt so slimy against our bare skin and in our hair that we just ran straight to the bath room. We took a nice long soak in our "tub", which was really just a remnant of a tub, but a fairly large one, so we could both sit in it at the same time. It was a little crowded, but we managed. 

Risa got out when she felt sufficiently clean; I stayed longer, wanting to relax a bit more. Plus I was feeling a little bit tired now. I tried not to fall asleep in the tub, but I did. 

Kyle found me; I don't know how much later. It didn't feel like it had been very long at all, but it could have been. 

"Hey, sleepyhead, wake up," he said, shaking me by the shoulder. 

I jerked awake, splashing water out of the tub. The water left was cool, so it must have been a fairly long time since I had fallen asleep. "Huh? What -- ?" 

"Relax," he assured me, laughing. "Tashi said you were up super early, so he said it would be okay for you to sleep for awhile, although when Risa told him where you were likely to be sleeping, he didn't think it would be very nice for you to drown. So he sent me." 

I was uncomfortable without really knowing why. Why couldn't Tashi have come, or Risa? Then I remembered that they were still doing final repairs on Unit-00. It had had a bulkhead or something equally heavy fall from the ceiling onto it's shoulder. The long plate rising off the shoulder was bent inwards. 

I got of the tub then, reaching down and pulling the plug out. The water drained downwards with a slurping sound. I didn't really mind that Kyle was still in the room. 

My body caused me no shame. I had spent too many years in the ranks of the work force and big communal baths -- when we got them -- to be ashamed of it. I thought about that as I dried myself off from my bath with the scrap of sheet we used for a towel. 

Tashi had always respected my privacy, even when we very small. When we had been chained together, he had always looked the other way when I needed to go to the bathroom and I had done likewise for him. We had least helped each other with our baths without feeling guilty... 

I stopped drying myself and looked down at my body. I was very slender, but that was to be expected. I had been underfed my whole life -- poor feeding did not do wonders for one's muscle structure. The best thing was, since leaving the work force, we had eaten better, and the flesh around my ribs had filled out. I always thought they had looked rather silly, poking out like they had been. 

Tashi had once said that I was small and compact -- I could believe him. I had a narrow waist and hips, my arms and legs were stronger than they appeared, which wasn't saying much, and my breasts were very small -- at least they weren't squished by the hard chest plate of my plug suit. I didn't think that I was anything special, or any great attraction (at least physically) for Tashi or Kyle. With a shrug, I began rubbing the towel over my wet skin again. 

"You do yourself wrong to hide that body beneath clothing all the time," Kyle said from behind me, unexpectedly. 

I stopped, drawing the towel closer about myself instinctively. He was sitting on the egde of the drained tub, his eyes gleaming in an unsettling way. 

I laughed shortly after a moment, hoping that I didn't sound like I was forcing it. "You've got to be kidding me," I said, turning my back to him and unwrapping the towel slowly to continue drying myself off, although more cautiously. "I don't have the kind of figure Risa has." 

He came up behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders. "You don't need the kind of figure Risa has," he said, his voice too near to my ear for any kind of comfort. "You're fine just the way you are," he whispered in my ear, using one hand to pull my wet hair away from my skin. 

I tensed, though I couldn't tell if it was in nervousness or anticipation. His breath tickled my ear and neck, and a shiver ran over and through my body. "What makes you say that?" I asked, drawing the towel closer again. 

He slid his hands down my arms to where my hands were clasped together, between my breasts. "Because you're fine just the way you are," he repeated before touching his lips to my neck. His hands slid off mine and onto my breasts, rubbing them through the damp towel. 

I gasped, my body arching of its own accord away from Kyle. I couldn't tell if it was from fear, revulsion or actual need. 

"Kyle, stop it," I said, trying to slip out underneath his arm. 

I hadn't counted on him moving his arms to keep me in his embrace. 

He clamped a hand over my mouth, the other resting on my waist tightly as he pressed me back into him. "You're not going to fight me, are you, Mei?" he whispered hoarsely, his breath tickling my skin. Eyes wide, I nodded. His hands hurt. 

"Good," he answered shortly and then licked my cheek. 

I felt sickened and twisted my face into a mask of disgust. "Kyle, please, stop!" I begged, trying to twist away again. 

"Be quiet, Mei," he ordered roughly, one hand pulling away the towel I still held to my body. Exposed, I wanted to cover up for the first time in my life. 

"Oh yeah," Kyle breathed, his hands more roughly over my body. One hand came up to play with my breasts again as the other travelled down to stroke my thigh. 

I wanted to throw up. I felt violated and like I had somehow brought this down upon myself. 

When his hand came up between my legs and his fingers began to stroke me at my most secret self, I forgot about not fighting him and tried to get away as quickly as I possibly could. 

"Help me!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "Tashi! Risa! Someone please!" That was all I was able to get out before Kyle cursed and came around in front of me, backhanding me violently. 

"You little bitch!" he snarled as I fell beneath the force of his blow. I had almost managed to stay upright, but my foot slipped in a puddle of water and I crashed to the floor, landing on a piece of the wall no one had gotten around to picking up yet. It dug deeply into my hip and I knew that there would be a bruise there. I twisted to remove the piece, tossing it aside and forgetting about Kyle for a moment. 

He didn't stay forgotten for long. He was in front of me again in moments, placing his knee between my legs and right up against my body. "You like that, slut?" he growled, shoving his knee harder against me; I cried out in pain. "You think I don't notice the way you look at Tashi, the way you move your body when he's around? Here's a news flash, whore -- he's too good for you. You are not worth the flesh you live in and call a body. All you are good for is looking for is looking pretty in that suit you're so fond of. And it's no wonder you like it so much. It was made for a boy, right? It's the only one that would fit you properly with this figure of yours." He waved his hand over me and then slapped me a few more times before grabbing my breast again. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	18. At the End of the World (17)

_This chapter contains extremely mature and violent content. Reader discretion advised.   
Rated NC-17_

"Someone, please! Help me!" I screamed again. It turned into a wordless scream as his mouth closed over my breast and he bit it savagely. 

"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?" he said, slapping me again. He got up on his knees without removing the one against my body, undid his pants and shoved them down. I was frightened by the sight of him; he used the pause in my struggle for freedom to his advantage, pinning my shoulders down, removing his knee and then forcing himself inside my body. 

I screamed. His entry hurt. "How many times do I have to tell you to shut up?" he yelled, covering my mouth with one hand. "Jeez, you're tight," he continued in a snarl, pulling himself almost out of my body and then shoving back inside. "Why hasn't anyone ever fucked you properly before?" 

I felt like I was on fire. Every nerve screamed in protest to his actions. I started to twist beneath him, hoping to get my head free at least so I could scream for help again. 

"Would you hold still!" he demanded, shifting so he was covering my body with his own. I doubled my efforts, trying to throw him off. "Hold still!" he started again, and then literally flew sideways. Unfortunately, the blow wasn't hard enough to remove him from my body. 

I looked up; Tashi stood over us, a long piece of wood in his hands and a furious expression on his face. Kyle looked up too, and snarled primally. 

"Get off of her," Tashi said calmly. That frightened me. Tashi was always calm, but when it was coupled with that expression, I wanted to run and hide. 

Kyle thrust into me again before removing himself completely from my body on the outward stroke. His exit hurt just as much as his entry and my head swam in pain. He stood up, wrapped his hand around himself and quickly moved it back and forth until he ejaculated, in front of Tashi, and all over me. The stuff was sticky, and I did throw up then, rolling quickly to one side and emptying my stomach of what little was in it. Kyle shoved himself back inside his pants, did them up and faced Tashi. "Just want her for yourself?" he said mockingly. "Here's a tip for you -- she's a lousy lay." 

Tashi's expression soured more and he whacked the unsuspecting Kyle full in the face with his stick. Kyle went down with a thud! Tashi turned to me, still angry. 

I shrank back, crossing my arms tightly over my chest and drawing my knees high, turning away from him at the same time. Then Risa was beside me, throwing a blanket over me and wrapping me up in her arms. 

"Snap out of it, Tashi," she said angrily. "Mei was not a willing party to that." 

His expression didn't change for a moment; then it slowly softened, and he lowered his stick, dropping it once the end hit the floor. He sank to his knees and crawled across the distance between us, going opposite to Risa and sliding his arms around me. 

"I'm sorry, Mei," he whispered, and he sounded like he was crying. "I am so, so sorry." 

I started to cry as well, the full impact of Kyle's actions finally hitting me. Mine were understandable; Tashi's weren't. Both of them held me, not saying a word, but giving me the comfort I needed right then. 

"Are you hurt?" Tashi asked after a few minutes. "If he hurt you, I swear I'll kill him." 

I couldn't look at him. Instead, I just pulled the blanket down to expose my breast. There were sluggishly bleeding wounds where Kyle had bit me. I knew I would have several bruises, some very nasty, in a day or two, and I wasn't sure if I would ever walk normally again. His entry and continued thrusting had left me burning down there. I pulled the blanket up to my waist and saw the trails of blood streaking my inner thighs. 

"I'll kill him," Tashi stated bleakly, pulling me closer to him and burying his face in my wet hair. 

"Well, do that then," Risa said. "I'm taking Mei to get cleaned up." She forced Tashi's arms down and pulled me to my feet, wrapping the blanket fully around my body and leading me away. 

We left the bath room and were going down the hallway to our medical area when I stopped walking and just dropped to the floor, clutching the blanket close and crying hysterically. 

"Mei, c'mon, get up," Risa urged, tugging at my arm. "Kyle's just an arrogant Easterner who needed to be taught a lesson. He's not worth it." 

"It's not that!" I cried. "I just feel so...so wrong...and the look on Tashi's face after he clobbered Kyle..." I started to cry beyond the capacity of being able to speak through it. 

"Oh, Mei, why are you worried about that?" Risa knelt beside me and hugged me again, resting her head comfortingly on my back. "Tashi was just upset that he let Kyle get to you before he could warn you. He thought you could take care of yourself, but where Kyle's concerned...You should have seen the look on his face when he heard you screaming. We were working on Unit-00 and he just froze, dropping his welding tool all the way to the bay floor and dashing off like his ass was on fire." 

I was surprised to hear Risa use that paticualr word; she wasn't the type to use slang very often, and almost never did. But what surprised me more was her story of Tashi's actions. I hadn't thought that he cared for me that much... 

I slowly looked up at her; she nodded to my unspoken question. I closed my eyes and then wiped the tears on my cheeks away with the back of my hand. "Okay, then, let's get to med." I let her help me up and down the hall to the medical area. 

It didn't take long to get me cleaned up. The blood and ejaculate washed away easily, leaving only the bite marks on my breast, the bruises on my face and the ache between my legs to attest to Kyle's rough handling of me. Risa was very professional, and she pronounced me fit to wear the plug suit in three days. Until then, I was to wear loose shirts, protective wrapping about my breasts, and skirts. I didn't mind; I felt sore enough that I didn't want to even think about using the plug suit just yet. She even brought out clothing that I could wear until then. 

I had just finished getting dressed and was sitting down slowly -- and rather painfully -- on the bed there when Tashi quietly knocked on the door and entered cautiously, carrying a steaming mug in his hands. 

"Are you alright?" he asked, a slow flush coming over his face. He approached me almost as if I had some sort of disease that he didn't want and sat down next to me on the bed. "Here, I brought you something to drink," he added, offering me the mug. 

I made a ghost of a smile and accepted the mug with an almost inaudible, "Thank you." I sipped at the contents and found that it was apple cider, my favourite hot drink -- and the hardest one to find. We sat there in silence for a few moments, until he turned to me and began talking. 

"Mei, I...," he began awkwardly. "That is, I...I mean...oh damn it!" He leaned forward and covered his face in his hands. When he looked up again, he was bright red and there were tears in his eyes. "Mei, I'm sorry that I let Kyle do that to you," he whispered, his voice sounding as though he had to force it out. "I...I'm sorry it took his rape of you to realize how much I care for you." He turned away from me then. 

I nearly dropped the mug, staring at him in amazement. "Tashi, I...," I started, interupted when Risa came back into the room, carrying a small jar of something white. 

"Mei, I want -- oh." She stopped talking when she saw Tashi, though she didn't stop walking towards us. "Tashi, could you leave us for a moment?" she asked, cocking her head at him. He nodded and got up, leaving the room quietly. 

Risa gave me the jar and gave me instructions on where and when to use it. "We'll see how you're doing in three days," she said, wrapping me in a hug again. "I'm not going to force you into the entry plug of Unit-01 until you're ready to. Promise me that you won't go back until you think you can handle it, alright? I don't know how you're going to hold up under the mental stress of that position right now." 

"Promise," I got out around a closed throat. 

I left after that. Tashi was waiting just outside; he offered his hand. "I'll help you back to your room," he suggested. I took it with another ghost-smile. He led me slowly down the hall, and I was grateful that he did. I moved slowly, and as though I had a log between my legs. 

It took awhile to get to the room I shared with Risa; when we reached it, Tashi led me inside, and helped me sit on my bed. Then he gently pushed my still-damp hair back from my face and looked me calmly in the eyes. "Need me for anything else?" he asked. 

I couldn't even smile. "Stay with me tonight, please," I whispered, feeling tears gather in my eyes again. 

He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. "Anything," he said as he opened them. 

I got up then, handing him my mug and heading slowly into the washroom. "Doctor's orders," I explained, turning on the light and closing the door. 

I leaned against the door, fighting a losing battle against the tears that threatened to spill over. Then I managed to get a hold of myself, pulled the jar of cream out of my pocket, set it on the counter, pulled the skirt off and sat on the toilet to administer it. 

I nearly screamed in pain as the cool cream touched my flaming skin. I did draw a sharp breath and had to hold it for a few long seconds before I could continue. When I left the washroom, I was in tears. Tashi leaped up from the seat he had taken on my bed and set the mug down hurriedly, rushing to my side. "Are you alright?" he asked anxiously, taking my elbow in one hand and placing the other on my opposite shoulder. 

"I will be," I answered, my voice tight with pain. "I was led to believe that first times weren't quite that bad." 

He looked confused for a moment; then his eyes flashed angrily. "Most first times didn't involve rape," he answered, helping me sit down again. 

I lay down on my bed and turned away from Tashi. He pulled my blankets up over my body to my shoulders, smoothing them down around my torso. "I'm here, Mei," he whispered. "I'm not going to leave you." 

It was several hours still before I could sleep, and when I did, my dreams were filled with nightmares of Kyle and the horrible act he had commited on me today. 

* * *

They let me sleep in, which was nice, I guess. I didn't really like sleeping in. It went against everything I had ever been taught. 

As soon as I thought that, I started to cry again. It didn't matter whether I'd had the chance to sleep in or not, all that mattered was that they had left me alone. I was by myself right when I didn't want to be. 

Remembering Risa's instructions, I got myself out of bed, feeling even more sore and stiff than I had yesterday. I made my way to the bathroom, applied the cream, and took a long, good look at my reflection in the mirror. 

Bruises had formed on my cheeks. They were an ugly purple colour that was black in the middle. The outsides of the bruises were just starting to turn blue. To top it all off, my face was red from my recent crying, and the undamaged skin was puffy, though whether it was from tears or the abuse, I wasn't sure. Tears formed in my eyes again. It was so hard to believe...just yesterday morning...I had felt so safe... 

Then I noticed the pair of scissors on the countertop. Risa must have left them there, though for what purpose I couldn't imagine. Almost as if I couldn't stop myself, I reached over and grabbed them. As I looked back at myself, I wondered what I would do with them. I couldn't kill myself, even though I really wished I could. There was just no way I could leave Tashi and Risa...or Unit-01. 

I caught sight of my hair, uncombed since it had been washed the day before. The more I stared at it, the more it seemed like the perfect target. My hair had been my only vanity. 

I grabbed a handful, and began sawing away at it with the scissors. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	19. At the End of the World (18)

Risa and Tashi came back as I cut the last long piece of my hair off. By that time, I had sunk to the bathroom floor, in tears as each handful fell away. So I sat on the cold floor, surrounded by uneven chunks of my hair and the scissors lying beside me. 

"Mei!!" Tashi called, though it was largely unecessary. Risa was the one who found me, leaning against a wall with my arms wrapped around my chest, head down and crying almost hysterically. She rushed to my side and hugged me to her, rocking back and forth and singing softly. "It's alright, Mei," she whispered. "It's okay. We're here for you." 

Tashi stood just inside the door, staring at us as though he didn't know us. Then he slowly bent down and picked up one of the pieces of my hair. "Your hair..." he said softly. 

Risa ran her hands over my head. Then she pushed me into a sitting position, brushing the hair back from my face. "I like it," she said. "It suits you. Here, let me straighten it out a bit." She reached for the scissors, but I stopped her. 

"Don't," I whispered. "It's fine." 

She stared at me. "Alright. That's the way you want it..." 

"It is..." My eyes came to rest on Tashi's feet. I couldn't look up at him. I just couldn't. I was afraid of seeing that look on his face again, since I was almost at the same level as I had been yesterday when he had rescued me. "Tell me you didn't kill him," I whispered then. 

"Huh?" was their response. 

I got to my feet slowly, wincing with pain. Tashi had grown a lot in the last year. I didn't even come to his shoulder anymore. "Tell me you didn't kill him," I repeated, more forcefully. 

Tashi looked at the floor. "I didn't," he replied sullenly. "I wanted to...but I couldn't. He's in a locked room right now. I want one of the Units to take him far, far away from here." He looked up at me then, raising his eyes only enough to meet mine. I backed away, taken with a sudden, uncontrollable fear. 

"I can't do it, Mei," he said softly, almost so soft that I didn't hear him. "I can't be anything like him..." 

I ran from the room, dodging past Tashi and running down the hall as fast as I could. 

* * *

I didn't know where I would go. NERV was so big. I remembered the bottom level of the complex, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go there. I looked down at my skirt and loose tunic. Tears gathered in my eyes. 

_Why couldn't I see it?_ I asked myself as the tears slipped out, leaving trails of hot water down my cheeks. _Why couldn't I see him for what he was?_

I didn't have an answer, and maybe I didn't want one. 

Instead, I found a tiny hole in the skirt, dug my fingers in to make it bigger and tore the skirt off all around, so that it was nearly half as long. Now, it hung raggedly at mid-thigh, rather than below-the-knee. I tore the sleeves off the shirt and tucked it into the waistband. I found a lamp nearby in a supply closet that we had left there in case of an emergency and one of us was stuck there; the battery was low, but it would last for an hour or three. I set off down the hall towards the stairs that would take me down. 

The lower level was black. Only a single beam of light weakly illuminated a cross. A figure was nailed to it. Without thinking, I walked down the last steps, and heard the splash of liquid before I felt it. 

I turned my lamp on; the liquid was the same yellow colour as LCL. I bent down and was overpowered by the smell. The smell of blood. 

I straightened and thought for a moment. Wiping tears angrily from my eyes, I continued down into the LCL-filled room. 

It was hard. The ceiling was high; higher than my lamp light could reach. I sensed that at one time, this room had been filled, floor to ceiling, with LCL. Now, it was about maybe half full, which was still a lot. I had absolutely no sense of dimensions in this room. Even so, the floor soon disappeared beneath my feet and I had to swim my way around. I was glad the light was waterproof, or at least as waterproof as we could make it. 

It didn't help. The battery soon flickered and died. Whether it was from the liquid or it just ran out, I never knew. I let the lamp fall from my hand and swam towards the shaft of light. 

I got close enough to see that the figure on the cross was faceless. Seven eyes were tattooed on a dark surface in green, all connected by a triangle. A spear shot out from it's chest, piercing the location of the heart, if it even had one. 

_**Who enters my domain?**_

I stopped dead, almost sinking beneath the surface of the liquid. "I do," I replied defiantly, somehow knowing that weakness or fear would be a bad thing to show. 

_**Do you have a name, mortal?**_ The voice was not quite internal, like the Unit was, and it wasn't quite external either, like Tashi or Risa would be. It was just a part of the room, female-sounding, yet overlapped by many. many other voices, all slightly out with one another to create a dragging effect. 

"I do," I stated, floating lazily in the LCL. I offered no more. 

A long silence and then the voice laughed. _**You are strong, mortal,**_ the voice said. _**Yes, you are one worthy of the Children I have Created. But do not underestimate my other Children. I feel Them coming, even now. They will be here soon.**_

I felt then, the presence of others in the liquid. I stayed absolutely still, letting their minds touch mine. How many there were, I couldn't tell. They all flowed one right after the other, each one feeling only slightly different than the last. 

It happened suddenly. I started to choke with the overwhelming smell of the LCL, it burned against my skin, and I felt like I was about to sink. I didn't know how far down the floor was, and it was so dark... 

I struggled my way back to the entrance. The only reference I had was to look over my shoulder from time to time and make sure that the shaft of light was still directly at my back. 

I got out finally, ran up the stairs and ran away. I didn't stop until I had reached a hallway I knew off by heart. 

The hall leading to the Eva bay. 

Did I really want to go there? I asked myself. I knew I couldn't handle the smell and feel of the LCL in the plug, and I didn't have my thought sensors anyway. My feet started carrying me there anyway, even though I walked with a jerky half limp. 

Unit-01's entry plug was open and ready to go. No one was in sight. I climbed up to it awkwardly, tears in my eyes from the pain, got in and shut the door. I didn't want to activate it, just sit in the plug and be alone. 

"How could that have happened?" I whispered to myself as more tears came, and not from pain. Memories now...even visual flashes against my closed eyes. "What did I do to deserve that?" 

A weak ripple of anger ran over my mind, and it was not my own. I thought then that it had to be a pretty strong ripple of anger, if I felt it without my thought sensors. 

Before I had much of a chance to ponder over that, there was a soft tap at the plug door. "Mei?" came Tashi's voice. "Mei...could you at least open the door for a moment?" 

I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, knowing that it would be obvious that I had been crying. I got out of the seat and opened the door, though I didn't get out. 

"Here," he said, tossing my thought sensors at me one at time; I caught them both. "I thought you might want those," he said, his eyes holding mine. 

I couldn't answer. Instead, I only returned his gaze for a moment, then nodded once to acknowledge the gift, and retreated back inside, closing the door tightly. 

I affixed the sensors to my head slowly, trying to find the best place on my head with my new haircut. I ran my hand over my hair, still damp as it was with LCL and only one sensor attached. With a small shake of my head, I reached up and put the other sensor on. 

_Where is he? I'll kill him!_ the Unit roared in my head. I had to grab my temples to brace my thoughts against the force of it. I barely realized that the Unit had repeated what Tashi had said. 

"He's...elsewhere," I replied when I could, my head pounding with a sudden headache. "Tashi wants one of us to take him far far away, and I'd rather not do it." I could barely think. 

_I'm hurting you!_ I didn't understand, but a few moments later, the headache dulled into a barely noticable throb just behind my eyes. _ Is that better?_

"Yes," I said, grateful. 

There was a long moment of silence. _It's not your fault, Mei,_ he said. 

"Huh?" 

_Your mind is very open right now -- oh there it goes. It's not your fault Mei. You did nothing to warrant that kind of attack._

"What if I did?" I cried, leaning forward in the seat and wrapping my arms around my chest, wincing as I pressed a little too hard on the wounds. "I could have..." 

_No,_ he disagreed vehemently. _Believe me, I would have been the first to know._

"What do you mean?" My voice was very quiet through the tears I was forcing down. 

_First, let Tashi inside. You need to release._

I didn't listen. I did open the door, and Tashi was waiting on the other side, but I ran past him back to my room, where I locked the door, sat on my bed and held my knees to my chest, crying until I felt sick. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	20. At the End of the World (19)

It took a long time for me to recover. 

I was fine physically in about a month. I was back in a plug suit in less than a week after the incident, and back in the Eva as pilot not long after that, though I was immensely relieved that it didn't try to talk to me for another month yet. Emotionally, however... 

Risa handled Kyle's departure. Whenever Tashi mentioned it to me, I just froze up and couldn't respond to anything until the subject was turned to something else. She just said that she sent him far away. I heard her later tell Tashi that she had gone as far as her power cable would let her and then overhand-threw him as far as the Eva could. Satisfied that he was gone for good, I was able to relax a little. I was still afraid of taking a bath by myself and made sure that someone was near when I went to sleep. When I could sleep. It often evaded me for a long time, no matter how tired I was. Most of all, I was scared to be alone with Tashi. 

It was completely unreasonable, and I knew it. Tashi had done nothing to me, had shown me nothing but kindness and sympathy, among other things, but never had he ever even hinted that he meant me any harm. Still, inside I was still an emotional mess, and I was afraid of Tashi, of what he might do. Completely unreasonable...and I refused to talk about it. 

They noticed, of course, that I carried myself differently, that I acted differently around Tashi, even when Risa was with me. I was almost afraid to wear the plug suit, because it was so tight fitting. Every day, I would lock myself in the bathroom and stare at my reflection, telling myself silently all the things that Kyle had said. I kept feeling his body pressing down on mine; I kept seeing the look on his face and in his eyes. Every day, I cried my eyes dry, thinking that there were no more left, but the next day, there were always more. 

When Unit-01 did start talking to me, it was only briefly. I don't even remember what happened that day. It might have been a sync test; it might have been an above-ground venture with Risa; it really could have been anything. The Unit spoke a grand total of five words, and I don't even remember what they were. 

About a week after that, I started dreaming again. It wasn't bad dreams like before. Instead, a pretty blonde girl visited me. We would sit in a classroom (at least that's what I think it was) in two desks by the window and talk. At first we would talk about nothing special, like the weather. I didn't really understand what the weather would accomplish, seeing as I hadn't really seen anything but rainstorms, thunderstorms, and dark boiling clouds so thick that nothing could penetrate them when I was above ground. The last time I had seen sunlight or light cloud cover, not these pitch-black ones, had been before I was taken to the work force. Even so, the weather outside the window was beautiful. Sunlight, bright and clear, streamed through the window, coating everything in a bright golden halo. 

No one else was in the classroom. I remembered, very briefly, that the classroom in my other dreams had been exactly the same, but the thought didn't stick. I forgot it again almost right away. 

"Nothing's wrong," the blonde girl had said, waving her hand carelessly in the air. "Nothing's wrong with you, at least. It was all in his head." I didn't know what she was talking about, and when I woke up, I couldn't remember the dream. 

I had these dreams for two weeks, something like that. I could never remember them when they happened, but bits and pieces always came back later. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was Unit-01 who had been giving me the dreams. I met two people in the dream, the blonde girl and a dark haired boy, and they made me talk about everything that had been bothering me, including Kyle. The girl was no one real. The boy was intended to represent Shinji Ikari. 

Unit-01 told me it was for two reasons. The first was that I was such a mess inside, I needed help and I was unwilling to seek it. I still didn't like being alone or taking a bath by myself, and I still hated being alone with Tashi, but I could at least tell myself that I was fine, that Kyle was gone, that Tashi wasn't going to hurt me. The second was that I couldn't bring myself to believe the change in the Unit, and that I needed to get used to it so we could operate as the best team we could be. 

_We need to be prepared for the Angels. They're coming back,_ he had said. 

I had no idea what he meant. I wasn't about to ask Tashi. But I was willing now to at least accept the change in the Eva. 

I spent a lot of time in the entry plug, just sitting there and conversing with the Unit. Well, maybe not conversing. I would sit there, and I could feel his conscious on mine. Sometimes, we would actually talk, and I was getting more used to that form of communication. 

I finally got up the nerve to talk to Tashi, see if he knew about these 'Angels'. 

I found him alone one afternoon, about an hour after lunch. Risa, I knew, was off in Unit-00 doing something with some power cables in a lower recess of NERV. She had said that if we had room for a...something or other (I don't remember what she said), then she would make use of that room. 

Tashi was in C I paused outside for a moment, fighting back the fear that took me. Gulping down air and forcing my stomach to calm down, I pushed the half-closed door open and walked in, hoping that my shaky knees weren't obvious. 

He looked up as the door creaked open. "Oh, Mei," he said, smiling. "I'm glad it's you. I want you to see this." He turned back to the wad of papers he was studying. 

I swallowed and went to his side, keeping a tight rein on my impulses, the first of which was to run away as fast as I could. 

They weren't papers, was my first thought. They were pieces of very thin plastic or metal, or something thin, flat and opaque. A diagram took up most of the sheet on top. Lines and tight writing pointed to various places all over the diagram. I had to lean close to even make out the different words, and even then it was hard to read. I still couldn't read all that well, though if I went slowly, I could get through it all. 

The diagram, however, was fascinating. I did have to lean in close to see it clearly, and for a moment, I forgot that Tashi was right there, and that I had to lean around him to see it. It was a sketch of Eva 01 in both front, side and back views, with the entry plug below in a cut-a-way. Then I realized that my stomach was pressed against Tashi's arm and I hurriedly straightened and backed a step away. 

"So what does it mean?" I asked, trying to sound casual. 

Tashi swung his chair around, looking at me oddly. "There's a sheet for every Unit. Now we can find out how each one is supposed to look so we can fix them properly. I think..." He turned back and shuffled through the sheets before turning to me again. He looked excited. "There's a sheet on how the neural connections work and how the wiring goes, and everything! This is great, Mei!" He jumped out of the chair and hugged me. 

I just froze. I couldn't do anything. I just stood there, stiff as a board, with my mind frozen stuck. My reactions were useless. 

"What's wrong?" Tashi asked, pulling back and holding me at arm's length. I only stared at him. After a long moment, my jaw moved, but no sound came out. My hands came up under my chin so that my arms unconsciously covered my chest, plug suit encased as it was. 

He looked shocked. "Mei...I wouldn't do that to you. I just couldn't..." His hands slid down from my shoulders to just above my elbows. I stared up at him, shaking with the memories I couldn't force back. He was so much taller now... 

"I'm not like him, Mei," he continued softly. "What he did was just...sickening!" He dropped his eyes from mine, and his hands loosened their grip. "I almost killed him, Mei. I would have, too, but I knew it would have upset you even more." He raised his eyes again. They were flashing with a desire for me to believe him. "Sometimes I think the only reason I was born was for you, Mei," he whispered. "Everything I do...everything I've done...it's been for you." 

I couldn't take anymore. My impulses kicked in with ferocity and I broke free of his grasp, running out of the room as fast as I could without hurting myself. I ran to Unit-01 and climbed into the entry plug, activating it so that it slid down into the Eva. I couldn't say why I did that. I just did. 

_Did you ask?_ the Unit asked as soon as I was breathing LCL. 

I hugged myself, wrapping my arms tightly over my chest. "No," I answered softly. "I couldn't..." In my 3-D view of the Eva bay around me, I saw Unit-00 return, moving past the cage of the white Unit we had removed the chest plate from. 

A barely seen flicker and the cage was broken. Unit-00 lay on its side, the chest-less white Unit crouched on top. 

"What's going on?" I demanded, staring at the scene in shock. 

_GET OUT OF THE CAGE!!!_ Unit-01 shouted at me. I had to gasp for breath afterwards. _Help her! Unit-08 will destroy her!_

My hands flew to the controls and I twisted them; the Unit responded instantly, grabbing the catwalk across its throat and ripping it down. He tore the cage door down and ran out into the bay, dashing forward with an agility I've only ever seen hinted at. I was surprised; I'd had no idea that the Unit could move like this. 

Unit-01 pounced on the white Eva, knocking it off Unit-00 and farther down the corridor. Kneeling over it, Unit-01 began to punch at the white one, the huge fists making large dents in the shoulder plates. 

It was like I was an observer, rather than the operator. The Unit was displaying a visciousness I had never known...except that one time, before the workforce had stolen Unit-00. That's what the white Eva was trying to do now, steal Unit-00 from me again. 

It was irrational. I knew it was. Maybe it wasn't even my own thought, and planted there by an external source. I didn't know, and I wasn't about to ask. I knew I wasn't going to get an answer. So I just pounded on the white Unit until it stopped moving and trying to fight back. Then I stopped, leaning back on my heels. I was all but gasping for breath. 

"What...happened?" I demanded of Unit-01. 

_You took the chest plate off. The same thing happened to me once. The armor is all that holds the body of the Unit in place, keeps in check. The armor is the only thing that bends the Eva to your will. If I did not wear the armor I do now, I would not need you._

"Well, you don't have to sound so smug about it." Sometimes, he really got on my nerves. 

_I never said that I wouldn't keep you, just that I wouldn't need you._

I had the distinct impression that I was being laughed at. 

Unit-08 activated again, half-sitting up so that the hands wrapped around my throat. I almost couldn't react, but I managed to get my hands on the controls and brought my own hands up to pry the other Unit off. 

_Get the globe! The red globe in its chest. If you destroy it or at least crack it, it will stop moving for good!_

"Easier said than done," I muttered. I was safe inside the plug, I supposed, but it really felt like I was being strangled. The white, shapeless face grinned demonically at me, gaining more of a grip on me with each second. 

_In your left shoulder guard! There's a vibro knife there. Get it!_

I took one hand off the white one's to reach up and fight for the tall armor plate rising off my shoulder. The front part popped open and down and the knife rose out partway. My hand closed around the handle and I whipped it down. The blade glowed slightly; my hand switched the grip so that it was a stabbing tool and brought it down on the red globe. It bounced off, but it went down again. It was so hard to breathe... 

_What's going on?!_ a part of my mind screamed at me. I barely heard it. 

I was suddenly reminded of the enforced vision I'd had so long ago. The red globe with the fetal human in it set in the chest of the Angel. It was too late to stop. The blade buried itself in the globe and Unit-08 fell away. I gasped for breath. 

I released the controls but the Eva stayed in its crouched position. "What did I do...?" I asked softly, staring at my suited hands. 

_What was necessary. It would have destroyed us, and every other Eva here and then escaped and run out to destroy everything else it could find. You did the right thing, Mei. You saved us all._

I didn't move. I could hardly think. The only difference had been that there was no humanoid fetus in the globe. 

Risa picked her Eva up off the bay floor. One arm hung at her side. She stumbled over to me and laid her good hand on my forearm. A little screen popped up in my 3-D view with Risa's face visible. "It's okay, Mei," she said. "It...it wasn't sane..." 

"It doen't matter," I said quietly. "It was alive." 

She snorted. "So was Kyle; did he deserve to live?" 

I shuddered. "It's not the same -- " 

"Yes it is! You can't go around feeling guilty all the time, Mei. We need you too much. If you can't be strong for us, how can you be strong for yourself?" The screen closed abruptly. 

_She's right, you know._

"Shut up!" 

_No. She is right. I know your mind now, Mei. You are a strong person inside. If you can't be strong, when the Angels return, we will all die._

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	21. At the End of the World (20)

Things could only get worse before they got better. 

Tashi, Risa and I got on each other's nerves so much that we wouldn't speak to each other for days. Unit-01 would start to talk to me, and then I would snap at him and he'd recede so far that the Eva wouldn't function very well. To make things worse, we lost power for a week due to an eathquake that damaged Unit-01 and 00 so badly that they had to be repaired with pieces from a white Eva. At least this time we were careful not to remove too much. 

The slump lasted for about a month. Then it started to even out, but not too quickly. It was hard to even notice the change. It might as well not even have bothered. A week later, things got much, much worse. It made everything from the past month seem like paradise in comparison. 

I should have figured that he would have been back. I think we all "forgot" about him, when we should have been preparing. 

We were eating lunch, and trying to be civil to each other, when several men burst into C&C, where we were eating, holding shiny guns and yelling at us to not move. We were so startled that we just stared at them, forgetting to chew or swallow or put the food down. They surrounded us; each of us had at least two guns trained on us. I started to shake; my sandwich fell out of my hands to the floor. _Are they going to kill us? Would I be able to kill one of them...like I killed the Eva?_

I would have turned to Risa. I had barely twisted my head around when the barrel of the gun was shoved into my neck. It was cold against my skin. "Don't move," the man holding it hissed. I felt tears come to my eyes. Kyle could have killed me, but it would have been in anger...a human emotion. This man seemed cold, mechanical...yet still alive... 

"I'm so glad to finally join my lost children in their residence," a smooth voice interupted. I slid my eyes past Tashi's head. A tall man stood there, dressed in fancy clothing I had only seen something similar to once, with a smirk on his face that I wish I could have wiped off with a fist. He was handsome enough, I suppose, but there was an air about him that I could practically taste. He reminded me of Kyle, only a thousand times worse. 

"We weren't lost," Tashi replied softly. His eyes had glazed over. 

"Ah, but you were." The man came into the room, stepped into our circle and bent down to face Tashi, eye to eye though he still looked down at him. I couldn't see his face anymore, though I could clearly make out each thread in his long coat. It was new, or close to new. It was barely damaged. Somewhere deep inside me, I envied him. He could get new clothes, while we had to make do with what we found. 

"All of you belonged to me," he continued on. "I brought you all here to work for me, to find these marvelous discoveries so that you may share in the glory of their rebirth." He was lying; not about finding NERV and Eva, but about "sharing the glory". The only thing he would share with us, I was sure, was the bullets in the guns. 

He sighed dramatically and stood straight. He turned to face Risa and bent to look her eye to eye. It didn't help that Risa already was shorter than one of the shelves Tashi stored his maps on. "You, my darling pilot. I have missed you." I still couldn't see him; he was beyond my line of vision. 

I made eye contact with Tashi. His eyes had been blank; the moment I looked at him, they focused. It was so hard to read what they said....I missed everything else that the man said to Risa, and I jumped when his body stood between Tashi and me, and he bent to look me in the eye. 

I dropped my head. I refused to look at him. 

"Look at me, dear one," he said softly, persuasively. I looked at the black bottom of my plug suited feet. "Look at me," he tried again, more forcefully. I blinked. 

He took my chin in his hand and forced my head up. "I said, look at me," he hissed. 

I stared at him, hoping that I was keeping the fear out of my eyes. His eyes gleamed like Kyle's had...I couldn't help it. I started to shake even more. 

He smirked. "You're beautiful," he confided. "Perhaps with a bit of cleaning up here and there...a hairstlyist to trim that hair. Yes, you will be presentable." He let go of me and straightened, stepping away from us before turning, his coat swinging out dramatically. 

"I suppose you're wondering who I am," he declared, even though we hadn't been wondering. "I am Adam Carson, and it has been my lifelong dream to rediscover NERV and revive the Evas. I plan on taking them out of this place, perhaps East to the American Alliance, maybe West to the European Alliance, or both. I will show the world that they exist. I will show them that there is nothing to worry about. There are no such beings as Angels. They will see that." 

I burst into tears. I could hardly believe I did that, but I just couldn't help it. So many pieces fell into place at once. 

Everyone knew the legend of the Evangelions. I used to be bullied by older kids that if I didn't give them the little food I had found that day -- perhaps the first food I'd had all week -- the Angels would come and get me. Kids with homes told me to get away from them, like I was diseased, or their parents would tell me to leave when I asked for shelter, or the Evangelions would stomp me to bits. I had never seen an Angel or an Evangelion. Yet I knew when we had found Eva, when Tashi and I had found him, that he would not stomp me. I knew he would stop the Angels. But I suppressed it. I forgot. Eva didn't remind me. He wasn't allowed to....or he didn't remember, either. 

I looked at Tashi. Tashi had been nice to me...he had played with me, given me shelter when it rained, given me food when I was hungry. He would read me stories, draw pictures with colour sticks with me, show me how to play games properly. He gave me clothing, a blanket, a pillow, a strength inside I could never repay him for... 

My eyes widened, even as the tears continued to pour. No one moved. Tashi had given me something I could never hope to give back...something I could never give of myself... 

And it all fell into place now. I had never seen it before, never seen the whole picture. I had only seen my corner...had only wanted to see my corner. 

The gun was removed from my neck. The two men grabbed my arms and lifted me to my feet, dragging me away. I continued to cry, wishing I had the strength to turn my head, twist around, do something...just to see Tashi. 

* * *

I didn't eat, slept when I was tired, lay around the rest of the time. I could feel myself dying. 

And I didn't care. Adam Carson was going to use Eva as a tool for himself. He wanted fame, that was all he wanted. He didn't want to save the world, or prove anyone wrong. He just wanted to be the man that had rediscovered NERV and revived Eva. And he was going to use me to do it. 

He had told me what his plans were. Risa and Tashi were being held somewhere nearby. He wouldn't have them stand in the way. He was going to bring in a bunch of people, then let them go, and then have me take Unit-01 up to the surface to the waiting transportation, and then take me and Eva to where ever he wanted, and show us off. 

Like dolls. 

I was damned if I was going to let myself be a doll. 

He came to me often. I either pretended to be asleep or stared at the ceiling, unmoving. He would hold my hand, and my skin would crawl. I thought I would never have preferred Kyle's company to anyone else's. "You have to eat, Precious," he would say. "You have to look good in that suit for everyone." My body was already so thin. Now, I could see my ribs and my hip bones if I cared to look. 

He came to me one last time. I stared at the wall as he sat next to me and rested a hand on a protruding hip bone. "We're leaving tomorrow," he said. There was something about his voice...something threatening. Like the clouds that covered the city on the surface. "Everyone is coming here, because I don't have anything big enough to transport the Evangelion anywhere. I'm asking you once more, Precious: Will you pilot the Evangelion?" 

His words turned over in my mind. I licked dry lips with an almost equally dry tongue. "I want to see Tashi," I whispered. 

"No. Out of the question." 

"Tashi." 

"I said no." 

"Then I'm not piloting. I have nothing more to say to you." 

He was mad. His hand on my hip tightened ever so slightly, but the air around him so compressed with anger that I could have choked on it. He got up and left, slamming the door behind him. 

In my mind, I thought about what would happen. Would he kill me now, and find a new pilot? Maybe use Risa? I didn't know if Eva would accept her or not. I had thought a lot about Eva recently...I wondered how Shinji was, what he thought of all this, whether he would do it or not... 

_How long have I thought about the Unit as a person? Or cared about Shinji?_

The door opened again, and closed. Soft footsteps, barely audible, the bench creaking under added weight as he sat down. 

"Mei?" It was Tashi. "Are you alright?" I think he was afraid to touch me. 

I didn't answer. "He's going to kill us," I said instead. 

He was nodding; I could feel that. "I know. But he won't do it yet. He needs you tomorrow, and for however longs he plans to show the Unit off, until he can train a new pilot. If he can. He's already tried to use Risa and me, and another kid. I'm too old now, and it's never liked me in the first place -- " 

"He," I interupted. 

"What?" 

"He. Eva is a he." 

"Oh. Well, he's never liked me from the start, and Risa says it -- he -- told her to get out, rather meanly. I don't know about the other kid. He's been unconcious since before he came out. They had to cut part of the plug door off to get him out, even. You have to do it, Mei." 

I rolled over to face him. "Why." 

He stared at me for a moment in the dimly lit room. "Because it doesn't want anyone else. It told me that when Carson forced me into the plug. The screens changed, like they used to, and then there was this voice, saying that he wanted you. I had the biggest headache for nearly a week. Risa told me that he said, 'You are not Mei. I don't want you. Get out,' to her. The other kid, well, Carson won't let me see him. I don't like him, Mei. We have to stop him. I have this horrible feeling that something is going to happen, something big, and we can't handle it without you." He looked up at the ceiling. "We really need you, Mei...I need you. You can't let Carson take control of Unit-01, or any of the others. He'll destroy them, the world and us with it. He doesn't care about anything...nothing but himself." 

I already had known that. Adam Carson was no better than the people who originally built NERV. 

Tashi bent down and gathered me up in his arms, crushing me against his chest. My head rolled back on my neck, so I was staring up at the ceiling. His hair was soft against my cheek. "I love you, Mei," he whispered, his voice sounding tight. I felt a drop of wetness roll down my shoulder. "I always have. I need you to be the person I once knew...you're like a shell now, and I can't help but think that I made you that way. I should have warned you about Kyle, should have warned him...so many things I should have done, so many things I didn't do." 

He was crying. 

I tried to picture him, my Tashi, my savior, crying. I couldn't see it. Yet he was doing it, and all because of me. 

"I'll do it." 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	22. At the End of the World (21)

The plug suit made me look healthy, if a little thin. The material and the patterns on it fattened up my protruding bones and fleshed out the thinned areas, like my arms and legs. Carson had had it remade. It no longer had tiny holes that were growing bigger in places like my toes, heels, knees and hands. 

He escorted me to Unit-01, walking slightly ahead of me and to one side. He wore that coat still, but there was a different outfit underneath it. His shoes, slightly scuffed, clanked noisily on the grated walkways. My feet made no sound, and I couldn't feel the grate underneath my toes. 

"You remember the plan, right, Precious?" He smiled at me as I climbed up onto the Unit to get into the plug. I only nodded. I didn't want to talk to him. Then I closed the door, turning the handle inside to lock it. 

I sat in the seat, bringing the crossbar up to lock into place over my lap. I pressed the activation button and felt the plug twist in. It filled with LCL and the screens changed. The moment that I had a clear view in front of me, I was assaulted mentally. 

_MEI! YOU'RE BACK!_

I winced. "Yes, I'm back. Don't shout." 

_You're different inside...your mind feels wierd...almost, slippery._

"Yes. Do...do you know anything about what's been going on?" 

_I know that that man out there is like my father. He was trying to put the others inside me. He doesn't care for the people, just what I can provide him with._

"Trust me, that's all he DOES care about. For now, I will go along with what he says. Tashi says something is going to happen, but he doesn't know what." I paused. 

_And he loves you._

I felt my face go red. "Yes." 

_Do you love him?_

"How would I know?!" 

"Let's go, Precious," Carson interupted. For a moment, I wondered if he had heard me talking to myself. Then I remembered that he couldn't. I turned the outside speakers on. 

"Yes," I replied softly. 

The catwalk in front of me swung away and I stepped out of the cage. I heard several gasps as I slowly moved over to the launch shaft. There were so many people on the bay floor that I was afraid I was about to step on them. 

We launched. When we reached the top of the shaft, I was nearly blinded. 

Sunlight. 

I could hardly believe it. I covered my eyes and shrieked in pain. The last time I had seen sunlight had been before I was taken to be a part of the work force. My eyes were so used to the darkness and artificial lighting of NERV. How long had it been. Seven years? Eight? Nine? Unit-01's hands came up as well, blocking a lot of the light coming in over the screens. 

What had happened to the clouds? To the storm that cast perpetual darkness over the city since before anyone could remember, before the earliest records said? 

Carson joined me about an hour later. Unit-01 still had it's hands up, blocking the light. Mine still covered my eyes, and I whimpered in pain. Sunlight...the sky was a clear blue, unlike any blue I had ever seen, except in my dreams. Not a cloud in sight. 

Something was thrown over me, blocking the light. I peeked; it was a black cloth or covering of some sort. My eyes still hurt. I could hardly open them to look at anything. 

The radio crackled. "Can you come out of there, Mei?" Carson's voice came. 

"No," I replied. 

"Why not?" He sounded annoyed. 

"The light...it's too bright." 

"Oh that." Now he was really annoyed. "It's not like we can flip a switch and turn the sun off, Precious. You have to get used to it." 

"You can't readjust so many years of total darkness in a hour," I said calmly. I felt just as calm inside...too calm. 

"Fine. Be that way. I'll let you know when I'm ready for you to do something." 

I shut the radio off. I didn't want to listen to him. 

_Why are you doing this?_ Shinji asked. 

"Obeying him? Because I have no choice." 

_Yes, you do._

"If I didn't do it, he would have killed Tashi, Risa, me, and countless others, trying to force them into you. One boy is still unconcious because of you. What did you do?" 

Silence. 

_I don't want them,_ he said finally. _You are the only one I want._

Now I was silent. "Why?" I asked. I could barely hear myself say it. 

More silence. This time, he didn't respond. "Answer me, Shinji," I demanded. "I'm not going to do a thing until you tell me why." 

_I shouldn't tell you now. You won't be able to function with me, I know it. I need your mind open to me still, and if I tell you, it will be closed._

I wrapped my arms around my chest, dropping my head down and letting my hair fall in front of my eyes. 

"I'll tell you something," I whispered. "I care about you, Shinji. I always wondered...what you felt, what you thought, about me and the others. Whether or not we were toys for you, or so much more..." 

_Never toys, Mei. I don't know if I can feel anything in this form except emotions...but they are far away. Like ghosts of myself. And thoughts are all I am left with. It's so hard to explain._

I sat in silence for a long time. "So what do you feel?" I asked finally. 

_Emotions. I feel...relaxed right now. You are inside of me, where you belong, where no one else should be. I have no reason to be worried...well, except for him._

I nodded. "Carson," I said knowingly. 

_Yes. Him, and..._

The radio crackled again. "We're going to pull off the sheet, Precious," Carson said, smugly. "Are you ready?" 

I lifted my head. "Do I have a choice?" I asked. _I wish there was a way to at least dim the light down..._

As the sheet was lifted, the darkness remained the same. I was surprised. It was dark, yet I could see a lot of people gathered in front of me...a LOT. I had never seen so many people in one place before, not even in the work force. "Why is it dark?" I asked softly. Outside, over my radio, I heard Carson say, "I present Evangelion Unit-01!" 

_I can control the light intensity. I forgot about that._ Shinji sounded sheepish. 

My eyes still hurt, even with the darkness I now sat in. I closed them briefly, and then made the Unit stand up straight. I heard people in the crowd either gasp or scream. "But I didn't do anything yet," I protested. 

"Precious," Carson said then, "I want to give these kind people a demonstration of your outstanding skills. Would you be so kind as to oblige me?" I really hated his voice. It sent shivers up and down my spine. 

I sighed." What should I do?" I asked. 

* * *

Carson said it was "press coverage". 

I hated it. 

It took three days for my eyes to stop hurting, and another three for the spots I saw all the time to fade to a point where I could ignore them. Carson's medics were nearby at all times. One of them would always hand me my lunch or dinner and watch as I ate it, glowering if I did not. 

I had been locked in that tiny room with the hard bench for at least two weeks. My body weight, already low enough as it was, had sunk even lower because I had refused to eat. One of the medics, a lady I was beginning to like, had explained how important it was that I eat properly. She gave me a list of what I should eat, but I had stared at it blankly, and flatly informed her that I couldn't read. She assigned someone, instead, to make sure that I ate my meals, on time and healthily. 

Carson had revamped NERV entirely. For the first time, all hallways were brightly lit, repairs and construction were being done all over the place and it was filled with people. Luckily for Risa, Tashi and me, Carson had allowed us to continue our "duties" as the Eva specialists and pilots. 

"Yeah, REAL lucky," Tashi had said sourly as we ate dinner one night. 

Tashi was still in charge of the sync tests, which Carson insisted we run daily now. This upset my dietician -- that was the word -- a lot, because they often ran through my meal times. He was also testing other children for their compatibility with the red Eva, and maybe even one of the white ones when it was finished repairs. Tashi was in charge of that too. He had to show all the technicians that Carson had brought in how to repair the Evas properly. 

And press people from all over the world were flocking to see it. 

Carson had said one night, after insisting that I eat with him, that we were the hottest item in papers and news broadcasts everywhere. NERV and Eva were common topics at many people's dinner tables. The disappearance of the storm over Tokyo-3 had weather and atmospheric specialists baffled, and they struggled and scrambled to explain it. 

I never once mentioned Shinji to Carson or anyone associated with him. I know Risa and Tashi kept their knowledge to themselves. 

I found myself trusting my doctor more and more. She was a very nice lady, and I began to find it hard to believe that she was an employee of Carson's. Risa trusted her as well, because she was furthering her medical studies. Risa was thrilled to be learning so much. Tashi had a few technicians in his control who he was beginning to delegate more and more responsibility to. I had no one else. Carson kept me in his company whenever I wasn't in tests of any kind, making it hard for Tashi and Risa to see me when they had time, but it also made it hard for the press people who were allowed in certain areas of NERV to see me and get pictures or film clips. He said he wanted to surprise the world, when he finally revealed that Unit-01 was piloted by a 15-year-old girl. So far, all the press had was speculation as to how Eva worked. 

I hated him. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	23. At the End of the World (22)

I suppose I was used to sunlight by now. 

Luckily, the press conference was held indoors. 

Carson was ready to "present my lovely presence to the world". He still insisted on calling me Precious. 

The conference had been in planning for weeks. He had fussed over every tiny detail. He had the conference room scrubbed three times, floor to ceiling, until he was satisfied that it was clean. "No sense in letting the public eye know how bad a state NERV was in," he reasoned, almost cheerfully. Even so, I never saw the first cleaners of the room again. 

On the day of the conference, Carson had kept me out of sight from everyone even remotely associated with the press. It went on all day. 

I could watch it on a screen out of camera lines until the inevitable question came up: How does the Evangelion operate? Carson smiled charmingly and said, "I'd much rather let my associate handle that question. Mei?" At that point, I walked out into camera sight and up to the table on a raised platform, trying to get used to the millions of light flashes that went off and continued to go off. 

The questions poured in as I sat down. The first one clear to me was, "Mei, what is your job here at the rediscovered NERV?" A tall blonde woman of middle years -- who looked incredibly old to me -- was asking the question. 

Carson turned to me, smiling encouragingly and put his hand on my back, pushing me forward towards the little black thing on the table in front of me. "You speak into it," he whispered in my ear. 

I leaned forward, clearing my throat and hearing it echo over the whole room. Startled, I leaned back, only to be pushed forward again. The gathered crowd was growing impatient. 

"I um...I am the pilot of Eva," I said, surprised to hear my voice thrown back at me. 

The crowd buzzed excitedly. 

"What do you mean, 'pilot'?" the same reporter demanded over the noise. 

I hadn't had a chance to see Tashi, ask him what I should say or couldn't say. Carson tried to keep us seperated as much as possible, though he was trying to hide it. He didn't do a very good job. 

"Um, well, I'm the pilot," I said, a little confused. "I sit in the entry plug and Eva responds..." 

"Entry plug?" 

"It's a long tube...the pilot sits in it and controls the movements of Eva..." The flashes going off were beginning to hurt my eyes. 

Carson took the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said charmingly, "I think this would be much better explained if we were to see the Evangelion." 

* * *

I was really uneasy about letting so many people near Eva, but I didn't have much of a choice. The look on Carson's face as I turned to protest wasn't exactly what I would call sane, and I wasn't about to risk angering him. Maybe some other time, but not now. So I shut up and led the way to Eva. 

They all watched in rapt fascination as I climbed into the plug, shut the door and activated it. It slid in as smoothly as ever, filled with LCL and showed the perfect view of the outside world. 

_Why are THEY here?_ Shinji demanded coldly. I hadn't moved; the reporters standing all around me were still intent, though getting impatient. 

"Shouldn't they be?" I asked, confused. 

_Eva was a top secret project,_ he informed me. 

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling like I had somehow betrayed him. 

_I'm not mad at you, Mei; I know you didn't know. I'm mad at HIM for exposing the world's deadliest weapon to the entire population of Earth!_

"It's not moving," I heard one reporter say on the externals. He sounded annoyed. "Are you sure it's piloted by that girl?" 

"Mei, why don't you show these nice people that the Evangelion is a machine?" Carson asked persuasively. 

I turned on my speakers. "Why don't you get the catwalk out of the way so I can move?" I replied sweetly before shutting them off. I watched as Carson herded the reporters away, into the glass-walled room above, while the technicians cleared the cage and moved the catwalk away from my neck. I paused, making sure that everyone was watching very, very closely. They were. 

I walked out of the cage, loving the feel of the huge Eva responding to my commands, even the subconcious ones. I paticularily enjoyed the look of shock on their faces. I walked out into the bay and did a little dance, which probably looked pretty stupid since I didn't have the first clue about dancing. 

"I present to you once more, Evangelion," Carson said. 

I bowed. This was my show, not his, whether he knew it or not. 

* * *

I despised him now. 

Carson had somehow translated Tashi to be a threat to me and kept us apart at all times. He had security people around at all times, ready to keep us seperated. I started to hate everything. I hated my doctor, my dietician, the technicians who worked on the red Eva, Carson, even Risa. She was progressing so far in her studies. I barely saw her anymore, except during sync tests, and even those were becoming few and far between. I was even starting to hate myself, because I was becoming Carson's puppet, and I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know how to stop him from controlling me. 

The only things I didn't hate were Shinji and Tashi. 

I snapped at Shinji during a sync test one day, and instantly regretted it. He withdrew, and wouldn't speak to me. I felt so bad that my ratio dropped to below what Tashi had determined to be the standard starting ratio, and the test was lost. Carson was mad at me for the sudden drop and had a several loud words with me right afterwards, when I still dripping with LCL, shivering from an internal cold that I could never warm on my own, and feeling worse than I ever had in my whole life. 

_I drove him away,_ was all I could think, watching blankly as he stormed towards me, looking like the storm that had covered Tokyo-3 for so long. _How could I have done that? He left..._

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" he screamed as soon as he was close enough for me to wince from the volume. I didn't wince though my ears did hurt from it. I just stared at him, my arms wrapped around my chest. 

He came close to me, grabbed me by the upper arms and shook me. "We can't have dropping sync ratios like this, Precious," he hissed, lifting me off the catwalk and holding me in front of his face. "It'll destroy us if the public finds out about this!" 

I just stared at him, knowing there was this blank look on my face. He only grew angrier and shook me some more. I felt like my head was about to fall off of my shoulders. I caught a brief glimpse of Tashi coming up the catwalk behind Carson. I remembered the look on his face... 

"Leave her alone," Tashi said from behind him, quietly. It was the same quiet he had used on Kyle. I felt my insides stop. For a moment, I could see Kyle; it was him holding me and not Carson. I felt something inside snap. 

I screamed and struggled to free myself, trying as hard as I could to get out of his grasp. I shrieked at him to let me go, tossing my head violently from side to side and kicking my legs as hard as I could. He was so startled that he did let me go. I hit the catwalk and almost fell off, but managed to gain enough wit in the short time it took for me to hit the grated catwalk to save myself. I backed away from him by crawling. I couldn't stand up. My ankle hurt abominally. 

A ripping sound -- the horrible sound of metal tearing metal -- ensued then. Before anyone could move or even blink, and huge purple hand slammed down on the catwalk between me and Carson, bending the catwalk dangerously. 

I couldn't remember a time when I had seen Eva's hand up close, although there probably was a time when I stood on it for some reason or another. Now, I stared at it in shock, noticing, perhaps for the first time, that it was battered, dented, chipped. For some reason, I thought of Risa's hands. 

I looked up at Eva. It looked exactly the same as it did when in the cage. The teeth gleamed ever-so-slightly in the lighting. The yellow eyes glowed dimly in their dark sockets. Otherwise nothing had changed. I couldn't tell if anything even remotely alive stirred within that huge head. "Shinji..." I whispered. Then I glanced to the top of the hand. No one could get over that hand. They had to come in from the other side of the cage. 

Tashi was the first one around to my side of the hand. He was breathing hard, like he had been running. He probably had been, I thought later. At that moment, I was just too shocked, too surprised, to think much of anything. 

He dropped to his knees and slid on the grating a little bit as he fell beside me, catching me in his arms. "Are you alright?" he gasped, holding me tightly. 

I was staring up at Eva again, the way he was holding me. "I'm fine...." I started, but then I felt the tears come. "Oh, it's just awful!" I cried. "I hate Carson! I hate everything about him, everything he makes me do!! I drove Shinji away, I told him to leave me alone and he left -- " 

"He didn't leave you," Tashi assured me, even though I knew that he didn't like me talking about Shinji. He said that he didn't believe in spirits, and I wasn't going to try and force my own beliefs on him, especially since Shinji didn't like him. "See? He protected you. No one was inside Eva, no one else has been accepted inside Eva except you. He wouldn't leave you, I know he wouldn't." His words weren't very big, but they were comforting nonetheless. I didn't know he was wondering how Eva had activated itself and moved it's hand after it had been placed in the restraints. The thought didn't even occur to me until my mind had had a chance to calm down. 

Carson had strolled the way around the cage and was now approaching us. He was absolutely livid. He stopped a fair bit away from us, but close enough for us to hear him as he talked. 

"Let her go," he demanded, calmly. 

"No," Tashi answered, just as calmly. 

"Don't let him near me," I whispered. I remembered that tone of voice. I remembered what he had done to Kyle... 

"If you don't let her go," Carson started, his voice threatening, "I will have you thrown out of NERV -- " 

"And if you don't shut up, I'll break your neck," Tashi interrupted. I tried not to think about what it would be like to witness that. "Don't think I can't do it, or that I won't. I don't care what happens to me, but leave Mei alone. I won't take it if you turn her into something she doesn't want to be. Are we clear on that?" 

I was actually shaking. This was so much worse than with Kyle...Had I ever thought that I would never survive a worse experience? Everything was so wrong now....so upside down. I wanted to cry. 

Carson fumed silently for a moment before he spun on heel and stalked away. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	24. At the End of the World (23)

It happened in the middle of the afternoon. 

Carson had left me alone for all of a week. Then he had tried to gently persuade me back to his side, and when that didn't work, he tried more forceful measures, including having guards escort me everywhere and stand outside my at night. It still didn't work. He would turn me into something I didn't want to be. 

He would have turned me into a monster. 

Risa and I were sitting on the catwalk between Units 00 and 01. It had been repaired, for the most part. A few of the grates were still twisted and bent. We were eating a bit of the lunch Tashi had left for us. It had been a paticularily stressful sync test, another one of Carson devisions; all I wanted to do was go to sleep, but I recognized how stupid that would be after a sync test on an empty stomach. 

She finished off what was left of her food and sighed, leaning back against the railing. 

"I'm thinking about moving on," she announced quietly, looking up at the ceiling, finally visible in the bright lighting. 

"What?" I asked stunned. "Where would you go?" 

She shrugged. "Back to school, I guess." 

"In the city?" I snorted. "You'd never get that far. You'd be swamped by the adoring fans!" I sat up and waved my arms around, though the whole time I was screaming inside. _What's happened to me? I WAS someone I didn't want to be! Someone save me from myself!!_

Risa looked at me, almost in shock. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mei," she said, hurt. 

I winced and bit my lower lip. "Sorry....But WHY would you go?" 

"I'm tired of piloting that hunk of junk for no reason." She sighed again. "All we ever do is sync tests and the occasional trip above ground to the public presentations or whatever it is. It's just no fun anymore. I used to do this because it was fun. You and Tashi are both healthy, and you will be for some time; you don't need me, especially since you got that other doctor now, what's her name...And you know what's worse? Ever since HE came, I hardly get to see Tashi or you anymore...or at least the 'you' I used to know. You're different now, Mei. I don't know how he did it, but he's changed you so much I barely recognize you anymore." She looked at me now. "I want to do more, Mei. I know I can help more out and about in the world than just what I'd do down here, living like a mole -- " 

She never got to finish the sentence as a huge explosion sounded through the entire facility. The lights flickered dangerously and the ceiling rained on us. Somewhere to my left, I heard one of the workers scream in pain and shock, which was abruptly cut off. I felt my heart stop dead in my chest. 

"What's going on?" I asked Risa, not expecting her to answer. 

"I don't know but we'd better find out." 

Tired as we were, we to our feet and ran to C&C. 

Tashi was picking himself up off the floor. Blood ran down the side of his face from a cut above his eyebrow. He looked a little stunned and kept trying to wipe blood away from his eyes. No one else was in C&C at the moment. 

Risa made him sit down and stay there as she pressed a hand tightly to the wound to stop the flow of blood while I ran to get the medical kit we kept in the room. It wasn't where I thought it was; I had to go searching for it. In the meantime, I had to take cover under one of the consoles as another explosion rocked the place. I finally found the kit, grabbed it, and stumbled over a chair as I rushed to get it to Risa. 

Tashi explained, between "ouch"es and "ow!"s as we wiped the blood off his face with some sort of strong-smelling liquid, that the one monitor that had always remained silent and he thought it was broken but could never find anything wrong with it, had suddenly flared and then gone dead again, right before the first exlosion shook us up. He suggested that we go topside -- carefully -- and see what was going on. 

Carson burst into the room then, demanding to know what was going on. His hand was wrapped up in a cloth that was beginning to darken with blood. "I want an answer and I want it NOW!" he shouted. 

Risa and I looked at each other, pausing in our in our fixing-up of Tashi; I was still wiping blood off, and she had to actually stitch the cut closed. I raised an eyebrow at her, and then laid my cloth down. 

"I'll go," I said blandly. "You follow, if necessary. 'Not much fun anymore', huh?" Without waiting for an answer from them, I started to run from the room. 

"Mei, stop," Carson said. One of the first times he didn't call me 'Precious' when not surrounded by cameras. "I can't let you go up there. Who knows what will happen?" 

I grinned with excitement, and I'm sure it was not a nice grin. I saw it in the fear reflected in his face and eyes. "That's what I'm going to find out." I pushed past him and ran to Unit-01. 

"How could she ever think of leaving?" I muttered as I climbed into the entry plug. 

_Are we going?_ Shinji asked as soon as the neural link was connected. 

"Yes. Do you know what's going on?" Out of the cage, to the launch elevator... 

_Of course. It's an Angel._

Out of the shaft, above ground. I didn't move. I was on my own out here...Tashi couldn't watch what was going on, and even if he could, he wouldn't be able to tell me what to do. He was as new to this as I was. 

And it _was_ an Angel. 

I suppose I didn't really believe in them. I'd only ever seen one in my dreams, and even then they weren't clear. I couldn't see it now, either, but even the mere thought of it was enough to make me nervous. I'm sure my mind would have conjured an image of it, but nothing would come up. At best, it looked like a giant, disproportioned Carson in my head. I actually wanted to laugh. I almost did. 

_What are you laughing about?_ Shinji sounded like he couldn't believe it. _This is hardly the time to be laughing about anything!_ Now he sounded mad. 

"I'm sorry!" I said. "See, I pictured it like it was Carson..." 

_I'm serious, Mei. You will have absolutely nothing to laugh about._

I ducked my head. "Sorry..." I apologized. What was I doing? I was apologizing to a _spirit_. No wonder Carson didn't want me going out. 

Where did that come from? 

My speakers crackled. "It's close to you, Mei," Tashi's voice came, all scratchy and hard to hear. "Just follow the street behind you and turn left behind that tall building." There was nothing but static now. I shut the speakers off, took a deep breath in and let it out a moment later. I moved Unit-01 away from the launch shaft and in the direction Tashi had told me. Surprisingly, I was incredibly unbalanced and almost fell over. 

"What's going on?" I asked, more to myself than anything. Unit-01 was bent at a funny angle in the middle of the street -- feet wide apart, back hunched and arms out to my sides. 

_It's called an AT Field. It's kind of like a shield of energy around the Angel to protect it. This one isn't a flat one like I thought it would be..._

"Thank you for that helpful explanation, Mr. Science," I said sarcastically. I tried to right myself and walk again. 

_It also has the ability to affect the pilots. That's why you can't walk, and why you're being mean._

"How can I help something I didn't even know was going on!" I protested and promptly fell into a building. 

_It's hard to combat an AT Field, especially one that affects the mind._

"Great words of advice," I muttered, picking myself out of what was left of the building. I managed to stay upright long enough to get around the corner. 

I stopped dead and couldn't move. I would have found it eventually, or it would have found me. It was heading towards me anyway; as I stopped, another explosion went off and the building next to me creaked noisily and shuddered. It was an ugly sight. 

The Angel was huge and black. It stood even with the top of Unit-01's nose blade, or it would have if it wasn't hunched over. An angry red stripe the colour of blood zigzagged down it's front and back. Two ovular black eyes surrounded by white bone were set wide in what could have been a head. In the center of it's abdomen, that accursed red globe sat peacefully, dark red in the center and fading to bright red on the outside. 

It looked up at me, blinking the eyes from the outside corners in once or twice. I shuddered. It could almost have been human... 

A gaping hole appeared beneath the eyes and distorted the stripe around it. A red glow appeared and grew both larger and brighter. Before I could begin to think of how to react, a red beam shot out of the hole, hitting the building beside me. 

The sound was incredible. The glow died and the beam faded; all was quiet. The Angel shuffled forward on huge feet. Then the building exploded. 

It didn't collapse like I thought it would have, like I had seen other buildings do, especially if I hit them accidently with a wayward arm or leg. It went outwards rather than down; I got hit with metal support beams. The rest of the materials were too old to withstand the forces involved; they crumbled into dust. 

I had tears in my eyes and Eva almost fell over again. One of the beams -- a monstrosity that must have been a corner support for the entire building -- had all but wrapped itself around my leg. The armor was shattered where it had hit. Pieces of the armor were buried in the flesh beneath where it had been and cut deeply into it. I favoured that leg, taking most of my weight on the other. 

"What do I do?" I asked, my voice tight with pain. 

Silence. It was hard to clear my head of the pain. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't mine, my real leg was just FINE, but the thought went practically unnoticed. 

"Shinji? What do I do?" 

Another explosion. The street started to break apart under my feet. I nearly fell over and widened my stance to balance, forgetting about the damage done to my leg. I cried out in pain as I was forcefully reminded and dropped to one knee. It was so hard to see... 

"Are you there? Shinji?" 

The Angel turned back to me. The red glow in the gaping hole appeared again. I tried to crawl away, get out of the way... 

The beam passed over my shoulder. A moment; the building it had hit behind me exploded. The air pressure actually pushing me away, further down the street. My shoulder armor shattered. I screamed in pain and collapsed to the gound, gasping for breath and clutching my shoulder. 

The building fell on me. 

Everything went dark. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	25. At the End of the World (24)

When I woke up, all I could remember was the pain. 

I stared at the ceiling, trying to remember where I was. When my sluggish mind finally placed where I was, I turned my head to one side, and stared at the tubes running to the plastic mask I wore over my mouth, at the tubes that ran to a needle inserted into my arm. I hated needles...why wasn't I scared of that one now? 

My head felt light, and it was hard to think. I tried to remember how I had gotten into this bed, and what had happened to me to warrant the use of a breathing mask and IV tubes. The last thing I did remember was the pain in my shoulder. 

I lifted my hand to feel my shoulder. It was fine. 

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Why couldn't I remember? 

I stared up at the ceiling, at it's bright whiteness. I thought absently that I had no idea how the workers Carson had brought in had gotten everything so clean. It had all been so dirty... I hissed as the thought of Carson sunk in. Why couldn't he just go away and never come back? 

The door opened. I swung my head to see who it was. It was Risa. She was dressed normally for once, in a pair of pants and a shortsleeved shirt. I couldn't see what she wore on her feet. 

She walked up to me, carrying a tray. "You're up," she stated obviously. "How do you feel?" She set the tray down by my feet and walked around my bed to check the monitor by my head. 

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. 

"It's alright, you don't have to tell me. I can see that you are just fine." She smiled at me and laid her hand on my forehead. "Let's take this mask off now. You should be able to breathe by now." She took hold of the mask and lifted it up and over my head. "Better?" 

I nodded. Fresh air... 

* * *

She let me out that evening. In the course of the day, I had regained my voice and my strength, and my eyes stopped being blurry so that I was looking at everything normally and not like it was through water or wavy glass. Carson pretended that he was _so_ relieved that I was alright. He must have been feeling sick; he let me spend time with Tashi and Risa. 

Tashi _was_ relieved that I was alright. He hugged me and then held me at arm's length and stared at me, like he was trying to etch my face in his memory. His eyes were haunted. 

"So what happened up there?" I asked finally as we finished dinner. I hadn't eaten much; I didn't really feel very hungry yet, but I had to eat to keep my strength up. 

Tashi and Risa both froze for a moment and looked at each other. Tashi slowly set his fork on the edge of his plate and dropped his hands to his lap. 

"We don't really know," he said slowly. "We did have to go up to recover Unit-01 though..." 

"Why? What happened?" I looked back and forth between them. 

"It was...stuck," Risa said uncomfortably. 

"Stuck? What the hell does that mean?" 

"We should show you," Tashi said, standing up. "It's messy..." 

I was almost angry that they wouldn't tell me. I had a right to know. It was _my_ Eva they were talking about!! 

I wished they hadn't taken me to see it afterwards. 

The shoulder that had blown apart was in bandages of some kind. It looked wierd, one shoulder standing straight up as normal and the other just a stub. More bandages covered the leg that had been damaged. I knew about those. 

The others...I didn't know about. 

The chest plate was bent in four or five places. One or two of them had some kind of liquid dried around the edges. The left side of the jaw was missing. I could see pieces of the armor stuck in the flesh underneath. No bandages covered that. The right arm was bent at an awkward angle. Technicians were busy, hard at work setting up a sling or something next to it. An awful smell blanketed the entire area. 

"What happened?" I asked again, trying not to be sick. 

"There was even less left of whatever it was," Tashi said, a little too calmly. 

"It was an Angel," I told him. 

"Mmm. At any rate, Unit-01 ended up in the side of a hill. It took us two days to dig it out." 

"Two days?! How long was I out?" My head started to hurt. 

"Three," Risa said. "The first priority was the entry plug. It wasn't really hard to get it out, 'cause the Unit was lying on it's side. We nearly lost you..." 

"Shinji could tell me what happened," I interrupted her. 

I saw Tashi set his jaw at my comment. "Maybe, but I am not letting you into the entry plug until the Unit has been repaired -- " 

"Why can't you believe me that Shinji is real, that Eva is a person?" I demanded of them both. 

"We do believe you, Mei," Risa started. 

"No you don't!" I stamped my foot. I had never been this frustrated before. Since when had I ever displayed such childish emotions? "I can't show you Shinji -- I've never seen him myself, even, but he is _REAL_! That was an Angel out there, and I am far more likely to trust what Shinji tells me than anything you two could! He's been there, he's done all of this before!" I turned away from them and ran off. 

Where on earth had _that_ come from? 

* * *

I lay facedown on my bed, holding my pillow in my arms. I stared at the wall. The lights were off. My door was locked. 

I felt horrible. How could I have yelled at Tashi and Risa like that? 

I wanted to apologize to them, but I didn't know how. I had meant everything I'd said...but not the way I'd said it. How can someone apologize for the way they tell the truth? 

Carson had come once, asking to be let in, but I ignored him. He asked me politely that he'd like to talk to me about some things when I was feeling better. The words barely registered in my head. 

My doctor left food at my door, asking me -- no, pleading with me -- to eat. 

Tashi and Risa didn't even walk by. 

I closed my eyes. Had I driven them away? The only friends I'd ever had? 

* * *

Tashi did eventually have to talk to me. He stopped at my door, knocked once on it. "Mei, Unit-01 is finished repairs. We'll be running a sync test tomorrow." Then he left. 

I was there for the test. I didn't talk to him except for when asked questions. I didn't say anything to anyone after it was over. Just went to take a bath to get rid of the LCL and then went back to my room, locking the door again. 

A week after that, Shinji started talking to me again. 

_I'm sorry I disappeared like that,_ he said during another sync test. 

"What happened?" I asked. 

_I needed to focus everything on the Angel._

"And afterwards?" 

_Well....you were knocked unconcious. I had to protect you._

"Is that the only reason?" 

_Pretty much...Mei, I never told you what I was going to that day..._

"I don't want to hear it now." 

_If I don't tell you now, I'm likely to never tell you._

"Mei, the ratio just dropped 0.4%," Tashi's voice came. "Please try to concentrate." 

"I'll try," I answered emotionlessly, even though I knew he couldn't hear me. I had my internal microphones turned off. 

_I care about you Mei...more than I should._

"So?" 

_So I look at everything as how I should protect you. From Angels, from everything dangerous in your life that I can affect!_

"You really want to protect me?" 

_Yes._

"Then protect me from myself." 

Pause. _You're not taking me seriously._

"No, I'm not, am I." 

_I wish you would._

"Why." 

_Because I am being completely serious! I really do care about you Mei...I know you're upset about what you said to Tashi and Risa, but you had to do it. We are facing a serious threat here. Who knows how many more Angels will come? They have one purpose -- to destroy NERV and Eva and unite with Lillith. That's all they want. We have to keep them from doing that! It happened once before...I'm surprised there's still people around, even. How could anyone have survived...In short, I want to make sure that you survive through this. We need you... I need you...I need you to be a part of me, to be one with me..._

What was he talking about? Something inside of me snapped. 

"Abort the test!" Tashi was shouting one moment, and the next, "Mei! Mei, are you alright?" 

I looked up at him and tried to clear my eyes of the bluriness I saw him through. I managed to gain enough of my senses to tell that I was covered in LCL, lying on the catwalk outside the entry plug in Tashi's arms. "What happened?" I asked, my voice choked. 

"Something went wrong. All of a sudden, the ratios reversed entirely and we had to abort the test...Whatever happened, it was because of you." He wasn't trying to be accusing. I knew it was because of me. I had felt it snap. I started to cry. 

"I'm sorry," I said, tears slipping silently down my cheeks. I smiled weakly at him. "I shouldn't have yelled at you...I didn't mean to yell at you. It was all true though...It was an Angel, and Shinji knew it, so I knew it as well. Eva is a person, a soul lives inside it. That soul belongs to Shinji, yet it is a part of Eva..." 

"Mei, be quiet," Tashi said. He looked horrified or something close to it. "You don't know what you're saying--" 

"I do know what I'm saying," I assured him, lifting one hand to pat his cheek. The LCL-soaked glove of my plug suit made a wet -splatsplat- sound against his skin. "I finally understand..." I smiled again and then passed out. 

* * *

Things were finally getting back to normal. 

It had been a month since the Angel attack. Unit-01 had been fully and completely repaired. I decided not to ask where the materials had come from. Risa had decided to stay with us, after all. Best of all, the red Unit was finally finished all of its repairs. 

The last of the corrupted files had listed the red Unit as Unit-02. The identifying features -- four eyes, among others -- matched. It was really ugly. Worse than my Unit-01. It gave me the creeps...four eyes, staring at me... 

Tashi had me run the preliminary test on it, using my entry plug and inserting it into Unit-02 so I could give all the systems a check and make sure they ran properly. I was willing to do it; Risa professed that she couldn't even walk near the thing, why would she want to go inside it? 

"I'll just disrupt all the systems because I won't be able to think straight," she explained. 

The Unit felt different...much different, but I expected that. However, it responded to every command I gave it and before the test was over, it felt almost normal to me. Maybe it would feel better to whoever it was we got to pilot it. 

I climbed out of the plug, dripping in LCL. Carson was waiting to hand me a towel to dry my face with. "Bad news," he said quietly as I took it. 

I buried my face in the towel. "So what is it?" I asked, my voice muffled. 

"There was a demand for another press conference of sorts about an hour ago. A bunch of people in western countries got together and talked it over. Then they called me. Apparently, it has to do with that thing that attacked us last month." 

I looked up at him, the towel still covering my nose and mouth. "Tell them no way," I said flatly. 

He gave me a frustrated glare. "We have to, Precious. I don't know a thing about what happened." 

"Lemme tell you something -- I don't either. I was unconcious for most of it. Unit-01 did all of the fighting, not me. If you really want answers to what happened, ask Unit-01." I know I was only making him mad. I had just about had it. I still hated him. 

He narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't talk to me the way it talks to you, Precious," he said sweetly. "I couldn't ask it anything that it would respond to. Well, except...I'm not getting into that." He raised his hand and took my chin into it, forcing my head up so that I was looking at him. "They made threats, Precious, very ugly threats. All they have to do is print an article about how NERV is nothing but a well put-on show and that we're a sham, and we are DONE for. We are getting corporate support from some of the most powerful companies in the world. We can't afford to lose that support -- _I_ can't afford to lose that support. If you ruin this for me, I will be very, _very_ angry. Do you understand me?" 

I nodded. He let me go; I rubbed my cheeks where his fingers had pressed hard into my flesh. "I'll tell them we'll host it at the end of next week," he said calmly. "I'll talk to you again before then, Precious." With a charming smile, he spun on heel -- that annoying coat swinging out -- and walked away, his shoes clicking on the catwalk. 

I glowered at his back for a moment before returning to wiping my face clean and giving my hair a quick rub. 

After my shower, I joined Tashi and Risa in C&C. There were more people here now; the place didn't feel so huge anymore, with more bodies filling it. They were going through a pile of papers that were spread out over a corner of the floor. 

I sat down, making a triangle with them. "Can I help?" I asked. 

Tashi reached beside him without looking and handed me a small stack of papers. "Look through these," he said, not looking up. "These are applications for Eva pilots, believe it or not. That pile is all the candidates who are the right age and have no mothers or prominent female figures in their lives." 

"Why should that matter?" I asked, flipping through the stack. All of them at least had pictures attached, some came with a disk as well. 

"It was in the files before I lost them," he explained, glancing at another paper and putting it on a stack that was already quite large. "Only 14-year-olds with no mothers or prominent female figures can pilot. It didn't explain much more than that. That's why I couldn't pilot in the first place. I had a mother. I didn't look up to her very much, but she was there." 

"My mother was never around anyway," Risa said. "She was a doctor. I never got to see her. She was never there for me. My dad was, though, but that's not the point." 

"I figure you'll be able to choose the pilot better than either of us could," Tashi went on. "You were inside it. You know it better than us." 

I made a face. "Not _much_ better," I said, reading what I could of the top piece of paper. I was surprised that I could understand a lot of it. It still took me three times as long as Tashi or Risa to read a paper though. 

We were there for a very long time. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	26. At the End of the World (25)

The conference went much like the last one had, only this time I was in front of that crowd of people for the whole thing rather than just a part of it. 

The expected questions came up. 'How is it that Evangelion needs a human pilot' was practically the first question asked. Next was 'how do the human pilot and the Unit react together', etc., etc. Around lunch time the questioners got to the questions that really mattered: What was that thing that had attacked the city. 

I answered them as best as I could. It was an Angel, the Angels were creatures that came from beyond our planet, I didn't know what they were made of, I didn't know how it was defeated, I was unconscious, I was told that Eva was dug out of the side of a hill... 

One of the last questions surprised me. One reporter, a young man with dark hair and startlingly pale eyes, held his microphone up and asked, "I hear that there is a new Unit ready. Have you chosen the pilot yet?" 

I blinked a few times as the words sunk in. I thought quick. I smiled at him. "Yes. We will be notifying the chosen person in a few days." I wouldn't tell them the name, because I didn't even know myself. I still had another stack of papers to go through. 

Shortly after that, the conference was closed. I escaped as soon as I could, making myself unavailable for private questioning. The nice thing about having security around, they kept away people you didn't want to see. I only wished they could do that for me against Carson. 

Late that night, we were going through the last of the stacks of letters that kept piling in daily. My reading of them had improved a lot; they all said more or less the same thing. 

"Who asked these kids to do this?" I asked, disgusted. I was going over the application of a 14-year-old boy from America. All of them had been organized the same way: Name, age, family, school, location, country, personal interests and then a section written by someone else about their good and bad qualities. He would have been accepted, but in the "bad qualities" section, it said that he was showing sadistic tendencies which may or may not come into full bearing. I had to ask Tashi what "sadistic" meant, he told me, and I tossed the application into the box that was almost overflowing with rejected candidates. 

"I think Carson put out an ad or something," Tashi answered absently. Risa was catching up on some sleep in her room. She had been staying up late for that past four days trying to get the papers sorted into piles. I had ordered her to bed, finally. Tashi and I were the only ones in C&C. The other scientists had gone home already. 

I rolled my eyes. "Figures," I muttered. 

After many more hours of eye-straining, neck-hurting reading, I finally got throught the last of the stack. With a sigh, I stood up and stretched, then wandered out to get something to drink. 

NERV was silent. It seemed unnatural, now that there were so many people wandering around. I thought absently that I had come to take everything I had now for granted...there had been a time when Tashi, Risa and I would have had to move the entry plug from Unit-01 to Unit-02 on an elaborate pulley system. Of course, that would have been assuming we'd been able to fix it up in the first place. 

I passed by the huge glass wall that looked into the Eva bay. There they were...purple Unit-01, blue Unit-00, red Unit-02, all lined in a row in cages with catwalks stretching across their necks, connecting each cage to the one next to it. Further down, away from the finished ones, two of the five white ones were undergoing their repairs. The other three were just slouched in their cages, either waiting contemplation of repairs or waiting to be disposed of. The one with the side of it's head crushed in would be disposed of first. It wasn't even worth trying to save, 

I paused there, cup of water in hand, and stared at them. They really were ugly creations. One eye, two eyes, four eyes...Unit-01's eyes glowed ever-so-slightly in the dim light of the bay. Unit-00 stared ahead with its cycloptic vision, seemingly unalive. Unit-02's head was down, awaiting the arrival of the child to pilot it. 

Had I any right to chose the pilot? Probably not. I was nearly 16 years old now. I didn't even deserve to pilot Unit-01. I was too old, according to Tashi's explanation. How could I possibly make the decision that would change someone's life? It was different for me and Risa. We had had time to get used to Eva, get them to recognize us as a part of themselves. This new kid, whoever it would be, would have next to no time. Shinji was sure that the Angels would come again. I believed him. If Risa or I was put out action, temporarily or...permanently...the new kid would be forced to take our place, ready or not. I didn't know if I could handle the responsibility of that decision. 

I watched the silent Eva's for a few seconds more, and then went back to C&C, feeling inexplicably cold. 

* * *

I threw the sheet down on Carson's desk. "There. That one." I suppressed a yawn. I had been up all night, going through the very last of the applications, the ones I'd set aside because they'd looked the most promising. 

Carson didn't even glance up at me. He calmly set aside whatever he was working on and picked up the application, reading it over calmly. 

"Kaori Tetsukawa?" he asked, finally looking up at me with a raised eyebrow. 

"Yes," I answered, hoping I didn't sound as tired as I felt. "She lives in the city already, and her uncle is a member of the reconstruction committee. Her father is currently in America working with some sort of business over there, and her mother died when she was quite young." I was reciting everything from what I'd remembered on her sheet. All the details were there; he could read them for himself. "I want her." 

He looked at me again. I returned his gaze with an icy stare that challenged him to argue with me. 

"Very well," he agreed, setting the sheet aside. "How would you like her picked up? I can go, I can assign some people to go, you could go...any way, I'll have transportation and accompaniment arranged for." 

Wow. He was being _nice_? "I'd like to go," I said, hiding everything I was feeling at the moment. I was feeling almost...grateful..."I'd like Tashi to come with me too." 

His eyes narrowed marginally, almost imperceptibly. "Alright. I'll call her father, and have a time set up this evening. Agreed?" 

"Agreed." Without another word, I turned around and walked out of the office. Tashi was waiting for me. 

"So?" he asked, falling in step with me. 

"We can go this evening to pick her up," I said wearily. "He's having someone assigned to drive us there, or something. 'Transportation' he said. I don't know. I want to go to bed right now." 

"You should. I've rescheduled today's test for tomorrow, so you can go sleep until we leave." He smiled at me. "Sleep well, Mei." Then he turned and walked back the way we had come. 

I stared at his back. He seemed different now... 

* * *

I knocked on the door of the small house, hoping that someone was home. 

I stepped back, waiting for an answer. I glanced at Tashi again, who stood just behind me. He looked very attractive, dressed in dark pants, white shirt, and a long dark jacket like the one Carson favoured. His hair had been carefully combed into a style that looked messy, even though anyone could tell it wasn't. 

Carson had insisted that we look "presentable" when we went that evening to pick Kaori Tetsukawa. He had brought in several people that had kept us occupied for several hours before we had left. That was Tashi's end result. I liked it. I wasn't so sure about my own. 

I was now dressed in a long skirt and long-sleeved shirt with a light, shaped jacket over top. One lady had cut my hair again and styled it. Tashi claimed to like it. I wasn't sure. I still looked like me, only....different. The weather was cloudy, so we had an umbrella too, in case it started raining. 

The door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a severe black dress and white cap. "May I help you?" she asked somberly. 

"We're here to speak with Mr. Yuji Tetsukawa and Miss Kaori Tetsukawa," I said. I felt so wierd, visiting a stranger's house. How often had I done that when I was young, looking for shelter or food? 

"We're from NERV," Tashi added. 

"Please follow me," the lady said, opening the door wider. I went in, followed by Tashi. The lady closed the door behind us and then stepped around us, leading the way down the hall. 

I was impressed. The house was small, but well-kept, and well-furnished. Painting's hung on the walls, and a fine carpet covered the floor. The lady took us to a room with large, comfortable chairs and a low, dark, handsome wood table in the center. Many plants stood in pots all around the room. 

"Please wait here. I will bring the mister and miss to you," she said, closing the double doors partway. 

Tashi walked slowly around the room, carefully studying the paintings or the plants. He even bent over to study the table. "Come see this, Mei," he said, leaning closer to the surface of the table. 

I stood beside him, bending a little to see what he was looking at. "I don't get it," I said. 

"You have to look at the grain of the wood." He placed his hand on the table and traced out one of the patterns of wood. "See this one? What does it remind you of?" 

I stared it a moment longer, and then started to laugh. "It looks like -- " 

"I know!" he agreed, straightening and turning to me. His laughter quietly died away. "I want to tell you something, Mei," he started. 

The doors opened. The lady in the black dress held them open as a man with greying hair and a young girl walked in. I recognized the girl from her picture on the application. 

"Thank you, Linna, that will be all for now," the man said. The lady bowed slightly and closed the door. "How may I help you...people?" he asked then, almost coldly. 

"We're from NERV," I said. "Did Adam Carson call you today?" 

"Yes," he admitted cautiously. "Does this have something to do with that call?" 

"Yes it does," I said. "Were you aware that your daughter had put in an application for the pilot of the newly-restored Evangelion Unit-02?" 

He looked down at the wide-eyed girl beside him. "No, I was not," he said stiffly. "I think we should sit down and talk about this. Please, have a seat." He indicated two of the chairs side by side, took one of the ones opposite those two, and his daughter sat down in the one next to his. 

"Introductions are in order, I believe," he said, reaching his hand across the table. "I am Yuji Tetsukawa," he introduced, shaking first my hand, then Tashi's. "This is my daughter, Kaori." He waved his hand at the girl next to him. 

She smiled shyly at us. "Hi," she said. 

"I'm Tashi, and this is Mei," Tashi supplied. 

Mr. Tetsukawa looked somewhat surprised. "Mei?" he said, startled. "From NERV? That means you're the pilot of that big robot!" 

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. "Yes, that's me," I admitted. 

"Alright. So what's this business about Kaori being chosen as a pilot?" 

"Well, as you probably know," Tashi said when I hesitated, "there's another Evangelion Unit finished repairs and ready to go. Without our knowledge, Adam Carson put out an ad or called schools around the world or something and had students fill out applications of a sorts for the pilot position. We spent quite some time going through them, and Kaori was the one chosen." 

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "So what does this entail, exactly?" he asked. 

"We'll taking Kaori back to NERV and over the next week we'll run a number of tests to make sure that she is compatible with the Unit," Tashi explained. "If not, she'll be returned to you, and we'll search for a new pilot." 

_Real smooth, Tashi,_ I thought. _Like she's a toy or something._

"What, you mean she can't live here with me?" He seemed profoundly shocked. 

"I'm afraid not," I answered. "While it does help that you live in the city, we absolutely must have her live at NERV for extensive testing and synchronization." 

"I'll be okay, Daddy," the girl finally spoke up. "Really! I knew what I was getting into when Sensei asked us to write the forms up." 

"But Kaori, it's so dangerous!" her father protested, ignoring Tashi and I and turning to her. "Remember that attack last month? Remember how scary that was? Remember the damage done?" 

I turned red again. Tashi leaned over; "It's not your fault," he whispered, for my ears only. 

"I know that," I whispered back, "but if I had been better prepared -- " 

"Shhh. Don't worry about it. If the city thinks that they can fend off those creatures better than we can, I'd sure like to see them try." 

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Mr. Tetsukawa was saying to Kaori now. His eyes were filled with tears. I wished fleetingly that my parents had cared so much about me. Then I wished even more fleetingly that I even knew my parents. 

"Of course, Daddy," she assured him. I could tell she was trying not to cry. "I'm sure they'll take real good care of me." She looked over at us, her eyes begging for reassurance. Her father also turned to us, hopeful. 

I smiled as best as I could and hoped it looked convincing. "Of course," I said. 

He sighed. "All right, you can go," he said mournfully. "But please write me letters or something and let me know how you are, alright?" 

"Of course, Daddy," Kaori said, jumping up from her chair and hugging him fiercely. "I'll go pack right now!" she cried happily. "What do I need?" 

The truth was, I had no idea. Luckily, Tashi filled in for me. "Just enough regular clothes to keep you dressed for quite a while," he said. "We provide everything else." Kaori ran off to get ready. 

Mr. Tetsukawa turned to us again, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "So you're sure she'll be alright?" he asked us. "Nothing bad will happen to her?" 

"She'll be fine," Tashi said, his voice carefully comforting. "Mei has been a pilot for almost two years and the worst that's happened to her is a twisted ankle." He didn't say _how_ I had gotten the twisted ankle, and he didn't mention Kyle at all. 

"You will keep me informed of her progress, won't you?" Mr. Tetsukawa asked, moments before Kaori came pelting back into the room. 

"Weekly," I assured him. 

"I'm ready!" Kaori said, sliding to a stop on the polished floor as she ran into the room. She had a large, ovular bag slung over her shoulder that looked hastily stuffed with clothing, and assuredly was. 

Tashi and I rose. "Thank you for your understanding," Tashi said formally, bowing to Mr. Tetsukawa as we left the house. "We will keep you updated." He turned and walked back down the pathway with Kaori following behind. 

I bowed as well. "She'll be safe," I promised. "I'll keep her that way." I ran after Tashi and Kaori. 

"Parent's are such a pain," I muttered to myself before getting back into the car. "I'm glad I never knew mine." 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	27. At the End of the World (26)

"Initial ratio was over 30 percent," Tashi said as the first sync test progressed. 

I was watching the test from C&C with Tashi while Risa provided the "stable" test subject in the entry plug. 

"That's good?" I asked. 

"Very," he replied, his eyes fixed to the screen of harmonics patterns. "Her thoughts are a little scattered, but Unit-02 seems to be responding well enough." 

I nodded to myself. "How long has it been?" I asked. 

Tashi checked the time counter in the corner. "Almost time to let them out. About another half an hour. Better start getting ready." 

I let out an explosive breath of air and ran my hand through my hair. It bugged me, the new haircut. "I'll see you in a bit then," I said, turning and walking from the room. 

I took my time getting the plug suit on. I just sat there, on the bench in the change room, for at least ten minutes, wondering what on earth I was going to do. 

_I'm almost 16...Tashi said that only 14-year-olds could pilot...I changed her life forever...even if Unit-02 rejects her, she's been inside of it...a part of it, even if it was for such a fleeting moment...I can't pilot forever, can I?...This is all I've known for so long..._ The same thoughts ran through my head the whole time. How _could_ I go on? What if Unit-01 suddenly rejected me, didn't want me anymore? What would I do then? 

I shook my head. That wouldn't happen. Shinji had said so himself. 

I jumped up in frustration. I was talking about a _spirit_!! He didn't really exist! Just in Eva, powered it, made it interface with me. Nothing more. 

I dropped back to the bench, suddenly tired and worn out. He wasn't just a part of Eva...he was a part of me too... 

I slouched against the wall and stared up at the white ceiling, lit by flat bars of light. _How many more times will I see this ceiling?_

It was a few minutes later that I started to undress and pull on my plug suit. 

* * *

"Mei, your ratio is way below normal," Tashi said. 

"I know," I replied, feeling tears come to my eyes. "I'm trying..." 

"Keep at it," he encouraged. "I know you can do it." 

How long I sat there, I have no idea. I knew I wasn't synchronizing very well with Eva. I could actually feel that. It was like there was a wall there, in front of me, and I couldn't find a way to get over or around it. What was happening to me? 

It finally got to the point where I could talk to Shinji. His 'voice' seemed very far away, like he was on the other side of the wall. I realized with a bit of a start that he probably was. 

_What's wrong?_ he asked. It was hard to hear him through the noise in my mind. 

I wanted to burst into tears right then. "I can't get past this...wall!" I cried, remembering too late that I hadn't turned off the internal microphones. I didn't care at the moment either. 

_You have to try to bring it down._

"I _CAN'T_!!" 

"I'm shutting the test down," Tashi interupted then, rather abruptly. 

_You _are_ needed, Mei,_ I barely heard just before the screens shifted throught the spectrum again and the plug was ejected. I wondered if I had imagined it out of a need to hear it. 

I stumbled out of the plug. Risa and Kaori were there, with a pair of matching towels to hand to me. Tashi joined us a minute later. 

"What's wrong, Mei?" all three of them asked, fairly close together. Tashi was the last one to ask. I looked up at him, saw the concern, the questions, in his eyes...and burst into tears, dropping to my knees on the catwalk. 

Risa and Kaori were there beside me almost immeadiately, hugging me from either side. "I still love you, Mei," Risa declared. 

Tashi just watched us for a moment before kneeling in front me, carefully, and brushing Risa and Kaori aside, taking my shoulders in his hands. "Get it together, Mei," he said softly, shaking me gently. "We need you." 

"Why?" I cried, more forcefully than I'd wanted to. "You said that only 14-year-olds pilot -- I'm almost 16 now! You _don't_ need me!" I was nearly hysterical. I barely recognized myself. 

I couldn't believe it -- Tashi raised his hand and slapped me. 

It was deathly silent, much like we had first found NERV. A lot of the technicians were just contemplating repairs of the white Units or on a break of some sort and not anywhere near us. Time seemed to stand still as my head followed the direction of his blow, and it seemed to hurt worse than it actually did. 

He grabbed me by the chin then and forced me to look at him, even though I didn't want to at that paticular moment. "Will you listen to me for a minute?" he demanded. "You have to be 14 to be a pilot, but if you grow up over two years, Eva doesn't care! Your mind is still the same as it was two years ago, maybe a little smarter and a lot more in tune to the robot anyway. So get over that! And we do need you. You are the only one with a sync ratio high enough to be dependable all the time. I'll bet you don't even know what it is!" 

"It's over 75% upon entry," Risa supplied helpfully. "Within ten minutes or less it's 98%." 

I didn't turn my head to stare at her as I was staring at Tashi now, even though the numbers did make an impact on my scattered mind. That meant that when I got into Eva, it was like it really was me, and not me inside a machine. 

"So smarten up, Mei," Tashi said then. "We really don't have time to bring you back up to those levels." He got up and walked away then. 

I could have cried again. He was being so mean! 

* * *

It was just as well that he was being mean. I found myself struggling to bring myself back up to my original standard to try and please him, and even though it never seemed to make him happy, I got better and better. 

One of the problems was, everyone could tell I was trying to please Tashi. It got to the point where rumors were running around the building about us. I didn't hear any of them until some of the worst ones had had a chance to take hold. And then they bashed me down a bit. It was hard to ignore them. 

My ratios had dropped again in the two weeks I'd known about the rumors. One day, Tashi called me down to the infirmary. I entered the room and found Kaori sitting on the counter there with a sour expresion on her face and Risa applying a bandage to her cheek. 

"I couldn't stand it anymore, Mei!" Kaori explained when she saw me in the doorway. "They were making me so mad, saying all those bad things about you -- so I punched 'em one. OW!" 

"Quit talking or it'll hurt again," Risa said impatiently. 

"Apparently, some of the technicians were being less than kind," Tashi said to me. "Kaori took it upon herself to...defend your good name." It was then that I noticed the bandage just above his eyebrow. 

"How does that explain that?" I said, stepping closer to him and peering at the bandage. 

"Oh that. Someone had to break up the fight," he said noncommitally. 

"Hmm," I replied, just as noncommitally. 

The rumors stopped after that. Either that, or whoever was repeating them did it very quietly. 

* * *

It took about two months to get back up to where I had been, and even then I couldn't maintain it for very long. 

One thing I never counted on was how much I had depended on Shinji's voice in my head. He didn't talk to me the entire time I was trying to build myself back up, and I never realized how much I had missed hearing it. 

_Better now, I see,_ he said at last during a sync test. 

I actually jumped, I was so surprised. 

"You're back," I replied, telling my heart to calm down. 

"Who is Mei talking to, Risa?" I heard Kaori ask over our radios. 

"Don't worry about it, dearie," Risa replied. "It's not important." 

"But she's talking to herself -- " 

"Don't worry about it!" 

"Are you girls done yet?" Tashi interuptted impatiently. 

"Yes sir," all three of us replied together, and then we promptly started giggling. 

He sighed. "Girls," he said wonderously, as if that would explain it all. "We've lost the test now," he went on. "You can all get out." 

I didn't get out right away, though Risa and Kaori did. I heard Carson's voice over the speakers; "What is going on?!" 

"Thank you," I whispered to the Unit and then deactivated the plug. 

A week later was a day that Tashi had declared our rest day. We wouldn't do a thing that involved Eva, Carson, any kind of paperwork, _nothing_ that could be considered work. So he was taking us for a trip to the growing city above ground. Even Kaori was excited, and she had lived in the city for a time. She had offered to take us around even, and Tashi agreed, whispering to me that he really had no idea what he was doing or where he was going anyway. I don't know how he did it, but he got Carson to agree to let us go. He couldn't have stopped us, that I could see. 

Risa and I were the most excited. The last time I had ever been on a trip like this was so long ago that I couldn't even remember it. Risa had lived in a city before, but it had been a long time for her too. Kaori was always excited about something. The three of us were infectious; Tashi was often grinning when he saw us talking about it. 

It was almost hard to believe when we finally did leave. We got to the city above, were confronted by the sunshine -- 

And basked in the warmth we weren't forced to endure. Before, we had always been above ground for some sort of event that Carson cooked up. Excited, we ran to the nearest intersection. 

Construction of the new city was still going on. Right across from us was the beginnings of a tall building. Kaori ignored it, grabbed Risa's hand and ran away down the street. Laughing, I chased after them, Tashi following me. 

It was a great day. By the time the sun was setting, we were all pretty tired, but we felt great. Our last stop was on a hillside in an undeveloped area, away from the construction and all the noice associated with that. Tashi had insisted. "I want to see if the sunset is as beautiful as I remember," he had said. 

So there we sat, watching as the blue sky slowly changed from blue to pink and then to yellow, red and gold. It was breathtaking. I had all but forgotten how nice the sunset was. Only when the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon did we start the walk back into the city to get back to NERV. 

Poor Kaori. She was still so young and a bit fragile. Tashi ended up carrying her piggyback. She fell asleep on his shoulder within moments as he walked ahead of Risa and I. It was quite cute, and I had to smile. 

"She's really adorable," Risa said fondly, also smiling. "I can't believe she's synchronized so well with Unit-02." 

"Why not?" I asked, a little confused. Despite the recent events and everything, I think she was doing exceptionally well. 

She looked over at me. "Didn't you say that it felt wierd, being inside it?" she asked. 

"Well, yeah, but that's because I've been with Unit-01 for so long," I answered. 

"Is it now. Seriously, Mei, think about it...I've read some of the old reports. No one was allowed in Unit-02 besides the designated pilot, yet the pilots of Units 00 and 01 switched. Only 01 accepted the other pilot, but that's not the point. The thing is...I don't think Kaori really has the mentality to handle this very well." 

"What makes you say that?" I wanted to know. "I wish I had been like her when I started piloting." I made a face and shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. "Maybe I was...I feel so different now. I can hardly believe I was ever as innocent as Kaori is." 

"You weren't," Tashi called back to us. "Trusting, certainly, but never innocent." 

I stuck my tongue out at his back. "Thanks for sharing that," I shouted to him. 

"As I was saying," Risa continued loudly, before lowering her voice again. "She's still very young in all respects. I mean, maybe she's naive enough that Unit-02 just latches on to her...what if it won't let her go?" 

"Mmm," I started, thinking hard. "Kinda like -- " 

"The way Unit-01's latched onto you," Risa confirmed. "I swear, I have never seen _anyone_ hold onto someone or something as much as that machine has held onto you. I'm not trying to disturb you, Mei, really, I'm not. But I'm telling you honestly..." She slowed down until she wasn't walking anymore; I stopped too, but Tashi kept on going. "There's just no other explanation for it. That machine is ALIVE. It has feelings and emotions and it's more than just a biological body with an armour suit. It's scary...it's almost human." 

I stared at my feet. "I know I've asked before," I said quietly, "but Unit-00 talks to you, right?" 

She looked up at me. "Yeah...but not very often, or with very many words." 

"Mmm." I looked up to where Tashi has stopped, sat down and was waiting for us, holding Kaori in his lap. "He...he talks to me a lot. I know his name, and who he was...and he knows everything about me." 

"Who is it?" Risa asked, stepping closer to me. "Who was he?" 

I looked at her finally, wondering if I could tell her. Before I could do anything, a bright flash of light from the other side of the city distracted all of us. Our heads turned immeadiately, fast enough to catch the huge, silent explosion that sent up a fountain of dirt and debris. 

Risa and I glanced at each other before running to Tashi. He was already on his feet and swinging Kaori to his back. "It's an Angel; it has to be," he said. "We have to get back NOW." 

* * *

Within an hour, we had all the information we could possibly get and were decided on the course of action. It _was_ an Angel, and it was even uglier than the last one, what little I had seen of it. 

"We're counting on you, girls," Carson had said gravely as we were leaving the room to activate the Evas. "Don't fail us." His last words had held an element on threat. 

"He acts so tough!" Kaori had complained, slamming her fist into her palm when we were out of earshot. "I'd like to pop him a few -- BAM! Then he wouldn't be so high and mighty anymore!" 

"Calm down dearie," Risa advised. "It's not good to go out with that attitude." 

All three Units activated minutes after that and we moved towards the launch area. I watched Kaori climb into the harness, directed her to move her arm _that_ much to one side, before climbing into my own. "Ready!" we all reported. 

"Good luck," Tashi said over the radios, right before all three harnesses flew upwards. 

Above ground, a bit more of the city was now destroyed. Buildings lay in ruins, dust still floating in the air where they used to be. And in the center of all the destruction was the Angel. 

Kaori made a disgusted sound. "_THAT'S_ an angel?" she asked in wonder and amazement. "That doesn't look anything LIKE the angels _I've_ seen." 

I would have laughed if the situation wasn't so serious. I made a face at the big ... _lump_ that was the Angel. It didn't look like any Angel _I'd_ seen either. 

It looked nothing more like a big blob of black goo, lying in a puddle in the middle of the street. It was sickenly pretty, just lying there calmly with the dark raised circle of the globe in the center. The city lights that were still on after the destrucion it had caused reflected off its surface. Yet it seemed that they weren't so much reflected as swallowed up...and shone back out. Even as I watched it, another explosion sent up clouds of dust and debris behind it. 

"Just remember the plan," Risa reminded her, sounding disgusted. "You had to go up against one of those, Mei?" she asked. 

"It wasn't that ugly," I said. 

"Get on with it, girls!" Carson shouted over the radios. "That thing is destroying the city!" 

I rolled my eyes, said nothing, and moved Unit-01 into the planned position. "Ready," I reported, hiding behind a building. Risa and Kaori were ready moments later. "Okay...on three," I started. "One...two...thr--" I didn't get a chance to finish the sentence as my building suddenly disappeared. Unit-01 whipped around. The black mass that was the Angel confronted me. 

I just stared at it, not moving, and it didn't do anything either. After a moment, it gathered its "body" into a dark semblence of Unit-01. The red globe was set near the "ribs", and it had a dark center, just like the last one. 

"I don't believe it," I whispered. Slowly, I reached a hand out to touch it... 

_Mei, NO!_ The warning came too late. My view warped briefly. 

The Angel's globe lit up. In it's center was the curled human form of my dream. A blast of light, and Unit-01 was pushed backwards, toppling the building behind me. 

"What is that?" I gasped, staring up at the dark sky. 

_Its weapon and AT Field,_ came Shinji's voice distantly, like he was concentrating on something else. _I can't explain now. I need you to focus. Get the progressive blade out of your shoulder._

I untangled myself from the building and rose shakily to my feet. Risa had moved forward to engage the Angel. I could only watch as it sent out the blast of light again, which sent her flying backwards, crashing into another building and not getting up. "Risa..." I whispered, staring at the melting feet of Unit-00. 

_The KNIFE!_

I shook my head slightly, dropped the one shoulder and activated the knife. At the same time, Kaori ran forward to attack the Angel. _Why isn't my radio on?_ I wondered. The Angel didn't even turn around to deal with her in the same way. She landed much farther away, in an area that was already destroyed. I was amazed that she got up and tried again. Another flash of light, and this time...she stayed down. _They can't be dead..._ Unit-02 lay on it's side farther away than before, the shoulder plates melting downwards. 

In that moment, I realized how much they had meant to me. I started to get mad. I grabbed the handle of the progressive knife, yanked it out of the holder and dropped to one knee. I barely noticed the extra presence within my own. 

I didn't know if I would ever remember the details. Unit-01 launched itself forward, encountering a bright red field of some sorts for a moment, but it quickly disentegrated. I brought the knife up, jamming it towards the globe. It contacted, and the globe cracked. My knife started to bury into it, shooting out sparks of light, but its "body" jellified and wrapped around me. The force of it knocked my hand away from the handle and pressed both it and the red sphere agaisnt my viewscreen. The light emitted from behind the globe grew brighter and brighter, and the last thing I saw before it destroyed itself was the curled form stretch out, turn towards me and open it's eyes. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


	28. At the End of the World (Epilogue)

Tashi stared down at the sleeping forms of the girls that were the Evangelion pilots. It was amazing they'd survived...He knew he was going to have to devise better fighting techiniques if these...beings...continued to come. 

He moved around the closed, well-windowed room to the side where Mei lay. He pressed a hand to the glass, wishing he could be in that room, by her side. She lay there, so still, the white sheets pulled up under her arms and a clear plastic mask over her face. Risa and Kaori were similarily laid out on their beds. None of them had the slightest marks on their bodies to show the damage they had taken. 

He had seen the Evas though. All three had been badly damaged. He wondered where they would get the replacement parts for them. He also wondered if they could be ready in time before the Angels came back. 

He didn't doubt that they would come back, either. Something deep within him _told_ him that they would return. 

Now he wondered about his ability to protect Mei. She never knew it, but he'd made a promise to himself, years ago, to watch over her and keep her from harm. That's why he had felt so bad about Kyle's violation of her, the only thing he'd ever hated himself for. He still did, too. He felt that he'd betrayed her somehow...that he'd failed her trust. He had seen it in her eyes every time he'd been near her, the fear there, and something else, something he still couldn't put a name to. His hand shrunk into a fist, still pressed to the glass window by her bed. 

_Why can't I be with her?_ he thought in frustration. _I want to take her away from all this...and I'm sorry I got her into it in the first place._ He sighed, and willed himself through the glass to sit on the edge of her bed, hold her hand and kiss her forehead. Like he used to. 

No matter how hard he tried, he still stayed on his side of the glass. Right before he would have turned away, Mei rolled her head towards him and opened her eyes. They seemed defocused, but he got as close to the window as he dared and pressed his hand there again. She just stared at him with those unseeing eyes. But a tiny smile crossed her face briefly and then she went back to sleep. 

Heartened, Tashi rested his head on the window for a moment before going to see what was being done about repairs. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling of something important about to happen. 

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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax 


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